Work Text:
i.
He's using her.
Or rather, he's using all she represents. This woman - barely more than a girl, all slender arms and too-sharp collarbones, a pale bloom in the deep shadows cast by the solstice fires - is of an old and storied bloodline, of a magic deeper than any his family can reach without him.
And if he does not find a partner, sooner rather than later, even he will not be able to reach it.
Her mouth is warm and soft under his, the skin of her throat so thin and flushed under his fingertips, and it somehow breaks his heart to guide her down onto his outspread cloak, to ease her thick skirts up her long legs and give her so much pleasure that she begs him to find his own pleasure in her beautiful body.
He wishes he might see her bare, see all of what is hinted at through the heavy cloth of her dress, by the firm press of her against him as he coaxes her once more to pleasure, by the sweet way she softens to accommodate him in the dazed moments after his release.
"Sansa," she whispers against the shell of his ear as they huddle together for warmth, one guarding the other from the biting winds as they gather their clothes around one another again. "My name is Sansa."
"I know," he murmurs in reply, and even though it is considered rude, considered improper, he cannot help but duck under the fall of her hair for one last kiss. Their business ought to have concluded when he spilled, but she is so lovely that such an abrupt end seems unfair to her.
ii.
Old magics run true, especially when given the sustenance they need.
Sansa is of the Starks, the clan who cleanse the land with frost and ice, who feed the rivers and lakes with the snows they lay high in the mountains, who let the trees and bushes rest by stripping them of their leaves and blossoms. Willas sees her constantly about the town, usually with her sister - they bicker just as Willas and Loras do, he guesses, unable to keep from watching as they pass him by - but sometimes with one of her brothers.
He does not watch when she is with her older brothers, one full and the other bastard. They know, somehow, that he was the one who shared solstice-night with her, and they do not approve.
Willas understands that, of course - he can't abide the thought of knowing what man Margaery shared a blanket with, after all - but he thinks it unfair, too. After all, is this not the hardest winter they have had in years? Is this not the fiercest, the sharpest, the most unforgiving?
The snows fall harder than Willas can remember their doing before, and the frost that layers his windows in the mornings curl in sweet fronds and tendrils, reminding him uncomfortably of the spill of Sansa's bright hair against the dark green wool of his cloak. Solstice-night is a strange one, a night for sharing and forgetting, and yet Willas finds himself incapable of doing what he ought.
Winter is ending soon, and his magic must push it back. He cannot be distracted, not while so many are relying on him.
iii.
"You should not look at my sister," Arya Stark says, arriving one day in his chambers in the Hall with a narrow steel blade on her hip. "It is wrong of you to do it."
Willas has done more than look - unable to think for the distraction, he only last week sent a note to Sansa, asking if she might deign to have lunch with him, and she had accepted, and they had talked of flowers and beauty for over two hours, and had forgotten to eat a single thing - but thinks it might be unwise to say anything until he understands better why Arya Stark is here.
"You know that nothing can come of a solstice-night coupling," she says bluntly, as though she does not spend most of her time hanging about with a half-brother born to her father and a solstice-night lover, as though her family more than anyone is proof that anything can come of a solstice-night coupling.
Coupling. It seems such a ridiculous word, for the taste of Sansa's pleasure on his lips, or the flex of her thighs around his hips.
"I only wish to be friends with your sister," he says, he lies. He does not love Sansa, he knows that for a pure truth, but he cannot stop himself from thinking, from revisiting that treacherous little wonder: what does she look like under her clothes?
"My sister does not need any more friends," Arya Stark says, something like fear making her voice thin out. "Ask her what happened when last she made a friend, spring-born, and tell me then that she needs your companionship."
iv.
Spring-born is an insult, rarely used because so few to whom it applies are born anymore, but it does not sting any less for its rarity. Willas' pride smarts, because to be called spring-born is to be called a bastard, of sorts, born of a season which is neither one thing or the other, useful only for what it allows to follow.
Arya Stark does not think that he is good enough to be her sister's friend, is that it? If that is so, then why did Sansa follow when he slipped his hand into hers, an invitation and a promise, on the night of the winter solstice, in the light of the nightfires? Who is Sansa's sister, to decide whether or not Sansa can be friends with him?
v.
He asks Sansa what her sister meant, about her previous friends, and Sansa does not speak to him for many weeks after that.
vi.
The night of the spring equinox, Willas feels drunk, despite having drank nothing at all but water and a little honey milk.
"It is my turn to use you," Sansa tells him, her hands sliding under his shirt as she eases herself into his lap, and in the shifting duskish light through the fine spring rains, she looks more goddess than mortal woman, and far too lovely to be rocking her hips hard into his with only his good green cloak and the first tufty grasses for a bed.
vii.
She still won't speak to him, even after he made her scream his name to the heavens during the equinox, and it irritates him so much he can't settle to anything.
The lands flourish - the grass seems greener, the sprouting seeds hardier and faster than ever they have been before, since this power settled on Willas' shoulders, as if his restlessness pushes the world to provide him with distraction.
He allows himself to be distracted as much as possible, riding out to inspect the fields and the valleys, talking with the farmers and herders, setting his hands to good work in yeaning sheep and bringing lambs into the world, working himself hard enough that he is too tired to think of red hair and soft eyes turned to flint.
It is my turn to use you.
How had she known? Had she felt it in his touch, that he had motives beyond simple pleasure?
The solstices and equinoxes are considered fertility rites, by those without magic in their bones, but Willas has seen enough of both to understand that it is more than simple fertility of the body that they chase on those nights - there is a fertility of the land that needs feeding, too, and that... That is why he was using her. Because the land has been failing, and he had hoped that their magics combined might save it, even if just until he can find a more permanent solution.
He had been right, but if that has lost him a friend, or someone who might have become a friend, was he right to do it?
viii.
He does not see her again until the summer solstice, on a warm, bright night, when he has no cloak and she has daisies woven through her thick hair.
"My lady," he says, although there are no titles needed, not on this night and, between two of equal rank, not on any other. The words come unbidden, just as the bow he gives her when he offers her his hand does, but they seem appropriate, somehow.
"My lord," she returns, her grip tight on his and her belly swollen under her dress. He cannot speak another word, and lets her lead him away, into the long grass and the wildflowers, and he does not dare press her back into the grass when a miracle is growing within her.
He has two children, Aster and Daryn, both born of equinox nights when his magics are at their peak, and he loves them both so fiercely that it sometimes frightens him. He is fond of their mothers, loves Tyene and Allyria as two of his dearest friends, but he never felt this way when he saw their bellies big with child, never wanted so much.
"Please," he manages, as summer peaks and so does he, turning again to winter via autumn and the harvest. "Please."
Sansa smiles a little, hips rolling and eyes bright with tears, and afterwords, when her belly is firm against his, she turns up her face to him.
"Maybe," she says, "we might be friends."
ix.
He sees her regularly, meeting with her and the midwives, introducing her to Aster and Tyene, to Daryn and Allyria, to his brothers and sister, to his parents and surviving grandparents. All the while, he is meeting her family and friends, mousy little Jeyne who hears everything and massive Smalljon who stands as Sansa's guard, her brothers who dislike him on principle and her sister who seems to fear him, her parents who seem not to know what to think of it all.
Children born of solstice- and equinox-nights are bastards, yes, same as any other child born out of wedlock, but they are different, too, afforded a greater respect than other bastards, and shown a special sort of affection by the community, because they are blessings of the old magics. This child he and Sansa have made is one such child, and it hurts to think that her family might dislike him enough not to see their child as a blessing.
Because it is. It is, just as much as Aster and Daryn were and still are, and through this child, Willas' fledgling friendship with Sansa has once more taken flight. This child is only good, only right, and he hates that there are some who do not see it as such.
x.
He holds Sansa in his arms again on the next winter solstice, but this time, they are in a birthing chamber, and she is dying to bring their child into the world.
"I won't allow it," he says fiercely, ignoring the protests of the midwives and of her mother, ignoring the searing agony of his bad leg as he bends and folds it to fit himself behind Sansa. She is already stripped bare, modesty forsaken for the sake of easing the midwives' work, and Willas does not think for even a moment before he strips his shirt off and tosses it aside. "I won't allow her to die. Not like this."
Her skin is clammy and too hot against his, just like the blood flowing too quickly from between her legs - so Willas, not knowing what he is doing or why, presses her back against his chest as tight as he can, wrapping his arms around her so he can press one hand against the pouchy skin of her belly.
"You have to name our daughter," he tells her, "which means you have to live."
Magic, old magic, magic that he doesn't understand, that he didn't know he possessed, runs from his skin into hers, finding all that ails her and giving his strength to heal it. He can feel it, feel her growing strong again, feel her coming right as she hadn't been since her labour began.
"Live," he orders her, holding just a little tighter as he begins to feel weak himself. "Live, damn you!"
She gasps, and something in the deep-down depths of his magic decides that it has done enough, and he knows no more.
xi.
"Aelinor," Sansa says, smiling shyly as she had over a year ago, watching him over their daughter's shoulder. "Does it suit her, do you think?"
He sits up, knowing that he is changed by what he did for Sansa, and holds his arms out for the babe.
"It is perfect," he says, "just like she is."
A child and a strange bond that he does not understand, forged in magic such as neither of them should have, are all that currently lie between them.
But that may change. Anything is possible, in a world where Willas can bring people back from the brink of death.