Work Text:
A very long time ago, there was a little girl who loved songs. She had fancied herself Jonquil, or Shella, or one of the thousand other beautiful maidens whose stories she knew by heart. That little girl would have adored the song of the princess and the bastard being sung in the halls of Winterfell.
Sansa Stark is no longer that little girl, and she barely swallows the bile that rises in her throat at the music.
“They hated those names,” says Bran, barely loud enough to hear over the noise of the minstrel.
“If you told Arya they would sing songs about her and her lover, she would have never believed it.” Sansa replies. Neither of them laugh.
Behind her, Brienne of Tarth grips the pommel of her sword. “If the song displeases you, my lady-”
“No. Let him sing.” Sansa pushes away her plate, most of her meal lying untouched. “I need some fresh air. Alone,” she adds, as Brienne moves to follow. She makes her way out of the hall, allowing the great doors to close behind her as the last notes of the song waft through the air, telling lies of how Princess Arya and Ser Gendry died in each others’ arms.
Sansa’s path takes her to the godswood, as it often does on days like this. The crisp spring air is a welcome relief from the heavy humidity of the hall, and the crunch of snow is a comfort under her feet, even after the horrors of winter. She sits at the edge of one of the springs, settling the heavy skirts of her gown around her. Sansa half-expected someone to follow her outside, but when nobody does, she tilts her head back and basks in the moonlight, cherishing her precious moments of solitude.
Her time alone is little and less now that the war is over. She is no general- she had left that to Jon and Arya and the high lords as they marched north- but she is a princess, a princess of Winterfell who must hold her head high even as singers spin lies about her dead sister.
It’s not fair. The ache in Sansa’s heart is as fresh as it was the day Bran woke screaming, as if he had felt the death blow himself; as fresh as it was the day Jon Snow rode into Winterfell with a tattered army and their sister’s bones; as fresh as it was the day Sansa had to sit Rickon down and explain to a nine-year-old boy that another sibling was never coming home.
Rickon had understood only too well, because Rickon, like Arya, was raised on a diet of death and loss in a world that had failed him so many times over.
Sansa wants to scream. It’s not fair, that people sing of her sister’s death like a story when Arya should be alive, fifteen, happy, in love. It’s not fair, that Arya is none of those things- not her, nor Robb, nor their parents, nor any of the dozens of people Sansa has loved and lost in the last six years.
She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry, either, because she is Sansa Stark and she cannot afford to do these things. Instead she mourns in private, locking away her pain to deal with in the dead of night and the silence of solitude. It’s a skill the little girl who loved songs perfected, a very long time ago.
Seasons and years and lives pass, and Arya Stark’s life is not in vain.
Seasons and years and lives pass, and Sansa Stark does not forget.
When little girls learn swordplay in the courtyard alongside their brothers, she does not forget. When noble women are wed as partners and not property, she does not forget. When fathers die and daughters live, she makes them a place in this new world, and she does not forget.
Seasons and years and lives pass, and Sansa does what Arya never had the time to do, and one day, when she hears the songs, her heart doesn’t hurt quite as much anymore.