Chapter Text
The air was heavy with the rage of the storm.
Rain coursed heavily down the leaded glass windows, thunder rumbling so loudly it could be felt through the stone walls of Winterfell.
Lightning forked across the sky, illuminating the still form of Queen Sansa Stark as she stood at the windows with a grave face and stared out. Her ice blue eyes surveyed the glow and flicker of the fires and torches in the sprawling camp that had gathered outside the walls in the last two days.
Her arms were encased in black and her gown echoed the somber mood. It was the deepest of grays, matching the clouds outside, and had a decidedly gold sheen to it. The top buttons of the gown had been undone and exposed her throat, her circlet long since thrown carelessly on her bed and she’d used yanking fingers to pull her red hair out of its ornate plait during her frenzied pacing of the room.
Now, with her hair falling around her shoulders and her arms crossed, she glared out at the soggy soldiers and ground her molars. They would attempt to siege her, draw her out.
Sansa was frustrated; they’d been goosed and had been caught completely off guard.
Exactly what Daryn Glover undoubtedly planned on when he’d amassed this force to attack her; Sansa was by now a well-known tactician and had won more than a few battles in the years since she’d become Queen. She was aware those who weren’t under her rule or not particularly fond of her had given her a moniker that ran rampant with the smallfolk – they called her Sansa the Savage.
The Savage Queen, so on and so forth.
Despite such a nickname from her enemies, it apparently had done little to dissuade the contentious and entitled Glover heir. When the army had shown up it had been overnight – the morning had dawned with panic as they discovered tents flying war sigils outside. Sansa was roused and a messenger was decided. The messenger rode out just before mid-day to discuss reasons and terms with the leaders of this new army. His body had returned strapped to his horse, with a rope tied to the pommel. As the horse had trotted through the main gate, the rope tied to the saddle had trailed behind it attached to the messenger’s head.
The castle had closed down and guards assumed their posts. The portcullis had been lowered, sealed while the blacksmith and two volunteers had kicked into high gear churning out weapons and arrows. They had sent ravens far and wide within the same day – asking for help or backup but Sansa and two of her four advisors believed that help was not an option.
Not only was the army outside comprised largely of Northern houses that would be the ones to respond to Winterfell’s calls for aide, the Vale was too far and the Reach was still too underpopulated to prove useful. This was entirely a Northern skirmish, in-fighting based on ambitious lesser Lords who had decided they were free long enough from the Iron Throne. This ambition had made it appealing to seek to overthrow the Stark who’d won them that freedom.
The Stark known to most as a savage.
Sansa spent days pacing the castle, restless and angry. She prowled the parapets, glaring down at the camps and sneering when arrows would pepper the walls below where she stood. At night, she sat in the solar with her advisors and they argued at length about their options.
She counted the fighting men, the young men, the women and the children. They did the math to calculate how long they had under siege – far less time than they’d thought. When they normally had two months' worth of food stored, the recent harvests had been scant and Sansa had made the decision to let farmers keep more of their stock to provide for their own families. They had been sitting at two weeks supply and that steadily dwindled with every passing day.
Three days after the appearance of the army, they woke to a large wooden structure being built in the middle of the siege camp. It was tall and unfinished, appearing to reach towards the sky and jockey for height with the tops of Winterfell’s walls. It would be done within the week.
Sansa had spent four hours in the solar, red in the face as she argued with her advisors and loyal Lords. The talks had gone ‘round and ‘round in circles, with no definitive answer or defense strategy procured. No one had any novel ideas, none of the men were set on doing anything but attempting to wait them out. The usual boiling water, lard, ladder pushers, fire arrows were all bandied about. Spiriting many of the women and children away in the dead of night to prolong food stores had also been discussed but no real new tactics had come to light. Sansa herself was running out of ideas, tricks and traps and had never been besieged before.
Personally, she was enraged. Not only was the betrayal deep but the surprise had caught her completely off guard, a tactic that hadn’t been successful in years. How had she not anticipated such actions from such an obviously impudent child? Admittedly, she’d assumed the Glover boy would slink back to Deepwood Motte and lick his wounds after being denied the hand of Tash Manderly, great-granddaughter of Wyman.
Years before when Tash had been an infant, Sansa had agreed to terms between the Manderlys and the Cerwyns – a marriage of Tash and the then new Cerwyn boy, Rohald.
Given that the betrothed were enamored with one another and the marriage had been agreed upon by Sansa and both of the Houses’ Lords, the betrothal was unbreakable. This had been unacceptable to the new Lord Glover, who rode high on his horse as the last of the ‘original blood of Deepwood Motte’.
Unsatisfied with the ideas of her advisors and not assuaged by the predictions and pontifications of the Lords, Sansa had excused herself and stalked back to her rooms. Her maids had long been dismissed for the night and there was no one to undress her but in this particular moment, she did not feel a Queen who needed to be readied for bed.
No, as she stood silhouetted by chaos and glaring through the downpour, she felt like a caged animal. More lightning flickered and the rain pounded on the closed flue of her darkened fireplace as Sansa paced, her brain warring furiously with itself. Her advisors were right – they had had a window to press an aggressive counter attack that was now closed. The majority of the soldiers outside were on foot and Winterfell had a heavy stock of armour and horses to transform into cavalry.
Until the tower had appeared.
She’d been bargaining for the aggression but now the Lords especially were wary of the large, wooden pillar that was gaining height by day. The tower was built far enough away from the walls that they couldn’t accurately shoot at it but close enough that one large trebuchet on top could do an unmentionable amount of damage. If they led an attack on Winterfell with a trebuchet war machine, the walls would fall and once the walls fell, they would be overrun.
Everyone would die.
Now, the Lords only spoke of caution and whined about over riding the betrothal. The boy has ambition and charisma, he will stop at nothing until he has a grander position, they argued. A grander position from which he can demand more and more things, she’d wagered. The siege tower had all but confirmed that for her. Sansa let out a frustrated growl and kicked out at the stand of fireplace tools, which crashed loudly to the floor and did little to funnel her fury.
She resumed her path back and forth instead, face mirroring the storm.
The insult, the gall, the absolute sheer impudence of these people. A rebellion over one man’s hurt ego, it made her lips curl back into a sneer. The irony of having her Crown challenged by someone who couldn’t handle an aspect of nobility that wasn’t even afforded to her at birth – the right to marry someone of their choosing. It was grossly unwarranted and selfish in her opinion and something in her wanted to tear his throat out for it.
She knew many outside the walls were banking on having a King with a future. Sansa’s refusal to marry or bear an Heir for the North weighed heavily on many minds – Lord and smallfolk alike. They bargained, threatened, mutinied, cajoled, gifted and sanctioned her several times early in her rule; marry someone or lose the Crown. Marry someone or be forever unstable. Marry someone to no longer be a target. Marry someone to reassure the people you can be controlled. Marry, marry, marry.
Sansa did not want to marry, especially not to any of the simpering Lords that over time she’d come to view as inferior. She didn’t want a man who hid behind his wife’s skirts and titles, she didn’t want a man with eyes full of ambition for his offspring, she didn’t want to marry a man who did not love her and the simple fact of the matter is she would never marry someone she did not love.
She’d married twice for duty and both times it had nearly killed her.
The man who had loved her truly was long dead and her personal punishment was not being aware she loved him back until after it was too late to save him. The guilt and agony of her broken heart over this man had long since stopped bleeding – scar tissue had formed, hard and protective over her heart. No one would ever force her to marry again and she would never force another to marry at someone’s whim.
Sansa only supported marriages of love, one of her biggest pitfalls and letdowns according to her court. She pretended she couldn’t hear their whispers and didn’t eavesdrop their paltry gossip as they roamed the halls unaware of her but the fact of the matter was, she was painfully aware. The snide comments, the whispers, the japes at her expense.
She would be unbeatable in battle and strategy until she had a weakness and many sought to vy for her attention and love as a way to provide it. In all ways, Sansa was paranoid and this activity had done very little to soothe her paranoias. In the end, she let them smile and wine her but would never fall prey to any man or promise.
Her weakness had died and she was no longer susceptible.
She hadn’t banked on love and marriage being the weakness of soft-palmed Lordlings, which would bring a small army to her walls. Every house banner and captain had been observed and documented – she'd review them and their allegiances once she’d figured out a way out of this mess. The ever-tightening noose around her neck was the slow, growing realization that she did not have a way out.
Sansa had prided herself on seeing all angles, all desires and all schemes. She anticipated betrayal, counted on deceit and depended upon greed to plot and manipulate both her allies and her enemies. The fact that this was so sudden and her advisors were so limp-wristed with their response had lit a fire of fury in her chest.
She paced, a wrinkle forming in her brow.
She’d have to be careful – the lack of novel ideas and foresight not only on her part but that of her advisors and allies spoke volumes. She was reasonably sure that Lord Glover had one, if not two, allies within the castle working against her and their churlish inaction all but confirmed it. Any moves she made would have to be carefully calculated or the information would get outside before she could enact it.
She had been cornered in her home by people she trusted while she had two thousand women and children to protect, along with all her fighting men and their steeds. Her move to press an attack had been refuted thoroughly but no one had provided an alternative plan other than readying siege defenses.
Based on the machine being erected outside, siege defenses would be useless. They were waiting to be slaughtered. Or rather, the people who remained loyal to Sansa were waiting to be slaughtered.
The thought made her seize a metal pitcher of water and hurl it at the opposite wall with a frustrated scream. She panted, standing in the middle of the room vibrating with helpless, rage-fueled, futile energy. The emotions burning in her chest clawed up the back of her throat and cinched her shoulder muscles up.
Her father would have sought to interact with them, understand, bargain until they saw reason. Her Lady mother would simply offer an alternative marriage. Jon wouldn’t have given him the time of day, let alone told him no. Robb would have allowed it, serving his Lords as much as he served their intentions.
Arya would have cut his throat after he’d departed the castle.
Sansa ruefully reflected on the fact that she now would have opted for her sisters’ route but was neither efficient at slitting throats, nor being invisible.
What of her other brother?
Bran would do magic.
Bran never would have been caught by surprise because he would have seen this coming – either via anticipation or his many ravens and crows that rode the winds would have spotted the advance and sang a song of warning long before Sansa’s human guards spied anything.
Bran declined to call his gifts magic but Sansa was a simple girl when it came to such things and she had long since decided magic was magic, despite what the person using it said. She’d been resistant to its uses and aspects in the world until the Long Night. Since hearing long dead Ice Kings scraping and punching their way through their stone crypts to attack to descendants of their smallfolk, Sansa wholeheartedly believed magic flowed through this world. It would eddie around most people in it but there were definitely a select few who could sense it, channel it and use it in whatever forms it managed to present itself.
Sansa attempted to follow the Faith of the Seven as her Mother did but her Father's Old Gods often found their ways into her thoughts and prayers. The Old Gods knew magic, they wielded it. Rumor said some of those magics still ran through Winterfell's walls and fed the fat Weirwood tree in the Godswood, so she'd grown up around it. Finding a bag of faces in Arya's possessions years before and the terrifying confrontation that resulted because of it had driven the message home. This concept of magic being real and evidently having touched her siblings was enough to have Sansa convinced it existed. She just didn’t understand why it eddied around her.
She wished now that she had this magic. Bran could see the future and people’s minds, Arya could make herself invisible and silent, Jon had been brought back to life, Rickon had spoken of dreams where he ran as his wolf, Shaggydog.
Standing here now in this room, she wanted to scream at the Gods.
All these gifts to her kin and what was she given?
“Traitors and cowards,” Sansa answered herself with a growl. Thunder boomed outside, washing over the castle and drowning out all other noise for a brief series of moments. The lightning that preceded it however, had illuminated a chest in the corner of the room that caught her eye. Slowly, as her brain whirred and clicked into place, Sansa turned and approached the chest.
It was pale, banded by burnished copper and featured a large bronze lock that Sansa had long since had picked. It was found long ago in the rooms that had once belonged to Maester Luwin, who was a known friend and confidant to her mother. The lock permanently hung open now, dangling crookedly under the red painted initials that shone in the momentary light.
C.T.
Sansa sunk to her knees and reached out to lift the lid; it creaked loudly and the smell that rose out of it spoke of time and decay. It smelled like old parchment, pungent herbs and dust. Inside, the chest was filled with an impressive amount of small, ornate bottles with handwritten tags. Most bottles were empty but there were still a few labelled and stoppered.
As she went through the bottles and read the tags with Maester Luwin's thin, cramped writing on every inch of space she wondered more and more about how much he did for her Lady Mother during their time together.
"... for aching joints in the morning ..."
"... for the pounding of temples... "
"... for pain from moonblood ..."
" ...for extreme heat in the body ..."
They all appeared to be variations on the same vein but differently concocted by him to cater to Lady Catlyn's specific needs and ailments. Some of the descriptions were vague, such as ‘... for rising with the sun...’ while others were completely untreatable when it came to tinctures such as ‘... to decry the Stranger ...’
Sansa sorted through the bottles, the glasses clinking musically as she slipped her fingers between the necks to pull the tags up to read. She wasn’t even sure if there was anything here for what she was looking for but desperation made her examine every single one.
Lightning flashed and thunder roared again as she pulled up a small bottle filled with a dark, viscous liquid. The simple tag read, ‘ ...for peace of mind...’
There was a space of several silent, rainy moments in which she stared at the bottle and the only noise was the storm and her frantic breathing. Her mind raced – what's the worst that could happen?
The tincture is rancid and she winds up ill?
She sleeps very well?
Or maybe...she winds up with some sort of...peace of mind?
Lightning flickered once more and thunder shivered her ribs as she held the bottle up and her face melted into one of resolve. She stood, letting the trunk fall shut as she made the decision and tucked the bottle into a small pocket in the folds of her dress. A pale hand grabbed the thick black fur cloak that she’d slung over the back of a chair by the fire and threw it about her shoulders, clipping the wolf clasp together at her throat decisively.
She lit a candle and put it inside a glass lantern, shutting the enclosure and latching it. The lantern was in hand as she swept from her chambers and instead of passing the guards out in the hallway, she ducked down a narrow staircase hidden behind a thick tapestry. The staircase wound around the inside of the outermost walls of the tower; it formed a highway directly from the Lord’s Tower to the Main Building, emerging behind another tapestry some 30 feet behind a pair of standing guards. Sansa shielded her lantern with her cloak and she slipped away from them and took another long hallway down towards the Guest Hall. Just before she reached the doors, she cut right and took a narrow hallway towards the armoury.
There were no doors this way directly into the Godswood, despite the buildings backing onto it but there was one, single window. Sansa unlatched it quietly and pushed the pane wide, letting in the roar of the wind and rain. The smell of wet leaves and tangy scent of rainwater hitting the hot pools reached her as she leaned out and lowered the lantern to the ground via a chain attached to its handle. It was a bit of a drop, at least 6 feet, but Sansa had used this window many times after Robb had shown it to her.
When she’d injured her foot jumping out it once, he taught her how to land.
Now, as an adult Queen clambering through the same window in the dead of night during a violent storm, she used the memory of her body and instinct to take a short breath, sling both her legs over and let go of the iron window frame. She landed and made a small noise as the air was briefly knocked out of her lungs but otherwise had successfully made it into the Godswood without alerting anyone.
The lantern didn’t put off much light in the oppressive darkness and amounted to little more than an accompanying glow rather than a guiding light. Nonetheless, Sansa knew this enclave like the back of her hand and followed her memory towards the Weirwood tree in the center. As she approached, she could smell it over the scent of the rain on the leaves and soil.
It smelled like blood and honey, both metallic and sick as well as saccharine and sweet. It had always smelled of honey but as the years had passed and the Long Night rose and fell, the smell of blood had grown and now still lingered. On especially cold nights, there were reports of a single tear of blood appearing on the trees face as it once had before the march of the undead.
Tonight, she found the tree and lifted the lantern to its visage and found it smiling – the smile was amused and she got a tingle of mocking from it. Sansa started at the change and took two steps back before she steeled herself, rain already soaking her hair and plastering it darkly to her scalp. Rivulets began to run down her face, dripping off her nose and running into her mouth if she parted her lips. All around her, the water pounded the Earth loudly, as if it were made into an airborne ocean that raged against the coast of soil.
Determined, Sansa knelt in the mud with both knees and jammed the metal legs on the bottom of the lantern into the muck beside her. She glared up at the tree, blinking rainwater rapidly out of her eyes and she realized she had no idea how to start. The rage and unfairness of the night that brought her here still sat in her chest but now that she was before the tree something deeper and scarier opened up in her chest.
It was akin to running to her Mother after being tormented by nightmares or the one time she’d been chased in the Wolfswood by a bear – when her Father had ridden up and hauled her up into his saddle by one arm, she’d been able to do nothing but sob into his chest with relief as they rode away.
Helplessness.
Being in this place, in front of this tree, she’d always felt safe and like a child of the world. She felt reassured that there was always something larger, more powerful and it would always hold the world at bay here. Now, she felt like the air was thin.
The power of this tree and its relationship to the castle and the people who inhabited it was hinged upon her and instead, she knelt in front of it in the dead of night to beg. She narrowed her eyes, even as the action forced the gathering tears from them.
“Help me,” She begged. As hard as it was to start, once the initial plea was torn from her throat, it became as torrential as the rain around her.
“Anything. I need something – good fortune, a blessing of wit, a...a... some sort of battle fury! Anything, please! Don’t you feel it? Don’t you see around you? We will die. If we die, you will die. There will be no source here for you, no people to mind you. Do you not see?” She asked, panting with emotion as her hands wrapped around each other in front of her, clasped in prayer. The tree said nothing, did not change.
“Please! Please! I know I haven’t been the most faithful to you but here I am! I crawl to you, in my weakest hour, I beg you. If not me, help my people. Ensure I die and that the people here will flee and survive if that is your price but do something . Help us! "
When still the tree did not respond, she didn’t feel a rush in the wind and there was no answering thunder or lightning, a despairing whine crawled up her throat.
“You will not give me magic but that does not mean I won’t use it!” Sansa finally snapped angrily and her hand shot into her pocket, withdrawing the small vial. She dug her nail into the wax and then again did the same motion with the cork. Determined, she tipped the small vial into her mouth and grimaced at the sour and very spicy taste of well-mixed herbs.
Pressing the back of her free hand to her mouth, Sansa dropped the vial and resisted rinsing her mouth out with the equally foul-tasting mineral water of the spring. Instead, she swallowed the awful mixture and gasped out a sound of revulsion.
A sensation like needles of a sleeping limb climbed up her back and engulfed her head. Sansa gasped and keeled forwards, her hands going deeply into the mud as they supported her. Her stomach writhed as if it had nothing but lemon juice in it and the foul aftertaste of pickled herb filled her mouth.
Bands of darkness, crushing and consuming, wrapped around her chest in her mind and squeezed to push the air from her lungs. Sansa gasped in futility before she sat back on her heels to grab at her throat with muddy hands. She tried to breathe but no matter what, her lungs simply wouldn’t inflate. Sansa was in a blind panic but couldn’t call out for help, even as she whirled in place.
All that was illuminated by the lantern was her muddy dress, the fallen leaves amongst the tree roots and the spooky outline of its face.
Her vision narrowed and pulsed, the darkness creeping forwards while the Queen gurgled and choked. Her white, clawed hand reached for the unchanged panel of the Weirwood tree as it smiled down on her and her vision went black.