...if in flight my wings should beat so far
From the kind grass that is so cool and deep
That it must poise among the winds on high --
Yet will I sing to thee from star to star
It had been a while since the last time Robb had to shake the melting snowflakes off his hair; the past months in the North had been almost gentle, offering mere cold winds and a stable chill rather than the terrifying storms that could freeze a personâs very bones and send them crying for Dorneâs heat.
He was glad the snow had decided to say its farewells to Sansa too - Robb remembered her as a little girl, flushed pink and wrapped up in so many layers she could barely move, staring in awe at the white covering Winterfellâs gray walls and Wintertown. It was beautiful, she used to say, like a city made of crystal shining under the sunâs dim golden light for her. He wondered if she still thought it pretty, or if snow, like Winterfell and the North and their dull gray days that were always the same, had bored her.
She had the Red Keep to look forward to now - and not only that. If her wishes of becoming the Empress were granted to her, Sansa would see a hundred more beautiful sights: the Reachâs gardens, Dorneâs sands and palaces, maybe even Essos some day. What was the North, compared to that?
Home, he thought.
Sansaâs AI let him in, and Robb smiled as he walked up to her, mirroring Sansaâs own grin. There were dresses on the bed in a mess of gray and white, waiting to be packed.
"Father wanted to give me some last minute advice on how to keep Winterfell in order. I think he meant last hundred hours advice." He made a face briefly, crooking his mouth in mock disgust. "How is this going, San? Need any help?" Holding up a dress that was lying on Sansaâs bed, he frowned. Then he gestured at the one Sansa herself had her hands on. "Why do girls even need so many dresses? Look, these are practically the same thing."
Robb had snowflakes melting in his hair. Sansa felt the effort and tension drain from her smile the moment she realised it. It had been so long since snow had fallen with such delicacy and grace. She took a step toward her brother and brushed the snow from his shoulder. Robb's dark clothes were cold beneath her hand; he must have been walking with their father before he'd come to see her. Single ice crystals clung to her fingertips and melted away in an instant, perfect minuscule stars destroyed with the merest touch. She hardly heard the first thing her brother said.
She was torn up again in an instant, lost thinking that there would be no snow in the Red Keep. When would she ever see a true winter again?Â
When Robb moved to her dresses, she found herself waking up to the then and there again. He was asking her a question, she was bound to respond. The heat in her chambers had already begun to melt the snow in his hair, making his red curls glitter wetly.Â
"They're not the same!" she said, defensively, replicating her smile once more. She reached out and took the dress out of his hand, refolding it before placing it with the others, as if to make some point. "Just because they're both grey doesn't mean-"
She paused and looked up at him, interrupting herself. Sansa had the horrible feeling that each time she did so, she might be looking at him for the last time. Robb's cheeks were pink from the cold, his eyes cool and calm and so like their mother's. His grin was becoming more of their father's smile these days however, a little heavier, a little less broad, than usual. Sansa tried to commit these little details to memory, take a mental sketch, carve an effigy of her elder brother in her mind - this, now, was how she wanted to remember him. Not quite a boy anymore. Not quite a man, just yet.
"I have to wear something on the journey to the sun ring," she began again, laying several pairs of leather shoes into her chest. "Once I get to the Red Keep, I'll have dresses in every colour you can think of, you know. I'll have a whole closet full of them. You'll hardly even recognise me in red and gold when I come home to visit when I'm Celestial Empress." At this she picked up one of her old thermacloaks, edged in gray fur, and draped it over her shoulders. She was smiling again, already dreaming of the day in question. Her as a tall, graceful queen of the Red Keep, Empress of the System, coming home to see her brother - the great Lord Paramount, the proud Warden of Winter. Would they still smile so easily then? Would it be snowing on that day, too?
i'm a native of the north pole and that could mess up any kid | robb + sansa stark | march, 6 months ago
It felt as though Sansa had been packing up her things since âthe crack of dawnâ - a sun-ring idiom that had never held much weight on the Planet of Winter with its shrunken days and living nights, but one which she felt she should, now, be prepared to use. Already the shy sun had come half-way up and gone back down again, so she knew instinctively that it couldnât have been more than a few hours since she began and, still, she was exhausted.
Sansa had underestimated the emotional toll of such a project. Sheâd set the AIs to categorising her possessions but had explicitly wanted to pack them by herself, allowing her hands to pass over all the smooth fabrics and cool metals that had, up to now, made up the context of her world. The idea was that this would be a good way to review her brilliant fortunes, but instead, as she folded up yet another wolf-grey dress, she felt her heart growing heavier and heavier.Â
Through the curved window of her bedchamber, Sansa could see the hazy yellow glow of Winterfell spun out below her, and the white starlight sloping across the distant ice-fields. In the sky, the dim blue outline of the Vale was visible, thumb-sized and hung among the diamond stars. She put down her things, dresses and leggings and shoes still laid out on the bed, and went toward the glass to look out.Â
Even from high up in the Holdfast, she could still see the citizens walking in the snowy streets, running between lamplights to and from the mining bars and warehouses. A mule vessel lit up in the middle distance and she saw its silhouette move upward and fly out of sight. Everything in the North was similarly joyless to look upon: austere and grey, framed by a utilitarian aesthetic. Its people were grim-faced and vulgar in their knuckle-cracking humour. Sheâd spent her childhood dreaming of colour and sweetness and symmetry but, all the same, this was home, and all sheâd ever known.Â
But she was being silly, really. She would be making a new home among the stars soon, hung up in the sky like those mythical princesses that the gods had made into constellations. There would be new friends and luxuries up there, new food and music and the sparkling promise of change. She was leaving home to become a someday-empress! What was the North compared to her sweet, handsome Prince Joffrey?
Stepping back from the window, Sansa went back to work. If she set her mind to mechanical duties, she would be able to conserve her emotional energies. The last thing in the world she wanted was to board the Imperial shuttle the following morning with her eyes all red and swollen from crying. Cersei Lannister would think her some weak little child and Sansa could think of few things worse.Â
The grey dress had just followed its sisters into the enamelled chest when there came a rap at the door, followed by the AI installationâs chime for attention.
âRobb Stark is at the door, Sansa,â the voice said. âShall I let him in?â
âYes,â Sansa answered, hurriedly, âyes!â She wiped her eyes quickly in case some tears were still clinging there. If her big brother saw that she was upset, sheâd be so embarrassed. With Father leaving and Robb newly in charge, they both had their duties to rise to. She could show him she was just as brave as he was.Â
The door slid back and she smiled, instantly.Â
âThere you are,â Sansa said. âI havenât seen you all day.â
the whole, wide world is whistling | august 29 | sansa stark - one shot
The north-folk had a bedtime story for every set of stars in the sky. Sansa had been listening to them all her life: the tales of lovers, eternally separated; of cursed soldiers, strung up by the heels; of great tigers and blue wolves that had been tricked into leaping after comets and found themselves tangled up in the heavens. Sheâd spent her first two weeks aboard the Red Keep trying to relocate those distant constellations and ground her perspective of the System in the static realm. But as the great station twisted and turned ever onward, she found herself waking up each morning lost anew, unable to tell up from down.
Until the Imperial standard had lifted them off and away from home, Sansa had never been off-world before. Robb had been plenty of times, and sheâd always begged him and Theon to tell her what it was like to see the ground from the air. Theyâd drawn her a rough image, but theyâd never mentioned to her how dizzying it all could be. To be surrounded by eternal stars and darkness; with days and nights passing imperceptibly into one another, beneath the diamond-studded black.
Sansa had known darkness in the North, but she saw now that it had never been a true darkness. Nights in Winterfell - those hard nights which lasted for months and more - had always shone. The clear, clear stars had glittered on the snow and silvered ice, colour-streaked winds would waltz overhead, even in the middle of the day. On the very quietest nights, Sansa could even hear those old gods singing, up high in the air.
On the Red Keep, the darkness - and the silence - were obfuscating. With the whole System and the red sun laid out beneath her, Sansa finally had a feeling for how very empty the sky had always been. Even the stars were hard to see at times, blurred and misted as the station rotated in its own heat-haze. Sheâd hoped, at first, that those attributes would make her feel insulated - safe, raised-up and held together. Instead, she only felt isolated.
On the day of Robert Baratheonâs death, Eddard left rather late in the morning. He seemed agitated, but Sansa had decided she did not particularly wish to ask him why. She missed her motherâs sensibilities. Her father, though she loved him, did not have much instinct for the priorities of a teenaged girl, never mind a future Empress.
In the tradition of her remedies for boredom, she gave the SEP-Ta the command to demand absolute perfection, and spent the morning brewing cups of tea over and again, and counting the stewing time in her head in the effort to meet ceremonial standards, until the AI voluntarily requested a break in order to recallibrate its temperature settings. Sansa went to the glass window and looked out over the rotating worlds below. She wished Joffrey or the Empress would pay her a visit, but she had barely heard a thing from either of them in days. She thought about creeping out past the SEP-Ta, but violating its supervision monitors would likely create more trouble than it was worth considering her fatherâs tension earlier that day. Coming away to the capital had meant to open her world up on its own hinges, but Sansa felt grim and unpretty for being locked away, like antique platinum in need of a good dusting.
The news of the Emperorâs death tracked across the silica news reader in the early evening. It took until the third repeat of the announcement to break Sansaâs window-bound daydream (Joffrey had arrived in coal-black clothes and swept her away to the Imperial throne room to show her the glowing red Blackfyre debris built into the walls).
It felt as if she had tempted the stars with all her staring and all her wishing; now a man was dead, and it as if she had hoped he would be killed. Even as she covered her mouth with two, pale hands, she knew that now the door would be made to spring open. Now she would have to go and be seen and do all those things she suddenly felt so very unable to do. The truth of the matter came clattering down around her.
Sixteen years old and suddenly Imperial Empress⊠younger, even, than Cersei Lannister had been. And yet⊠she was alone. No one came.
The SEP-Ta registered the news, promptly cancelled the remainder of the dayâs lesson plans and stood by to receive further notice of procedure. Sansa heard a dim running echo going through the hall beyond the chamber walls - the White Band, she was sure, responding to the crisis. Her breathing picked up; a bird, trapped in her chest, beat furiously for escape and her face flushed, warm. For an hour or more, she waited, hoping her father would suddenly burst in and put his arms around her; or that Cersei would appear, with hand out stretched and perfect face stretched into a brave, tremulous, encouraging smile. Her motherâs smile, Sansa was picturing. Be brave, Sansa, she might say. But there was nothing.
The news audio-brief repeated over and over until it spun itself into static in her ears, and then there was only the silence. And the dark and the space and the nothing, all around her, pressing in close. And when she looked again out through the great window, Sansa found she could not even make out the stars for her tears.
"Sansa Stark dreams of a perfect world. A world of numbers, of balance. Of grace and colour. A quantifiable world. But knowing how the planets turn and why the sun occasionally burn orange does not increase oneâs knowledge of the strange ways of people. Whatever the Truth of her lessons back home in Winterfellâs Hold, Sansa is coming to realise that, when it comes to the realities of politics, there is little perfection to be found." [read more]
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