DAENERYS TARGARYEN:
Dany was no stranger to family deaths.
Truth be told, Dany dealt more with death in her family than she dealt with anything else. She had memories of somber gatherings where everyone sat and pretended — genuinely, truthfully, just pretended — to care about the loss they’d all suffered. Most of the time, funerals and memorials were times when they would start to pick at one another; Dany posited that the reason most of them met an early grave was because of that dynamic — the borderline caring and incessant nagging of one another until the other just croaked — and had withdrawn often in her childhood to avoid those situations.
She’d had more family funerals than she’d had holiday dinners.
It was different here, though, at the memorial for Ned Stark; people had loved Ned, that much was certain, and his family seemed to be wholly and fully distraught — as they should be, given the situation — and yet still it seemed alien to Daenerys.
As Sansa sat down and offered her wavering smile, so too did Dany return one of her own — practiced, measured, she’d learned how to show certain emotions so that others would find comfort even if she was, herself, unaffected largely — and said, “I am so sorry for your loss, Ms. Stark. Your father was an amazing man, and he was lost too soon.”
“Thank you,” the phrase spilled from her lips without a second thought, like a toy repeating the phrase it was programmed to say when one yanks a cord in its back. Sansa immediately felt stupid. Was that even the right thing to say? Or was that something she had trained herself to do whenever someone - anyone - offered anything that even resembled an apology? It was probably the latter, honestly, but ‘thank you’ didn’t feel right given everything that happened.
She had been hearing similar sentiments every day since her father died and she still wasn’t entirely sure how to answer when someone offered their condolences. It had taken her nearly three weeks not to burst out into tears when someone so much as alluded to her father so now, the woman’s comment only had her stiffening ever so slightly, but not crying. Her eyes glassed ever so slightly but her spine was steel.
Sansa’s eyes flitted down her form and tried to remember who she was. She wasn’t someone that Sansa was overly familiar with. The younger woman mentally scratched out every possible connection - not from Stark Industries, not from Parliament, not from outreach work, not from Scotland - until she started remembering the guest list she and her mother spent the last week combing over. ( Honestly, their obsession with it, at least on Sansa’s end, was more of a way to focus on anything but the fact they were admitting the death of the Stark patriarch. ) It only took her a moment before she remembered her name - Daenerys Targaryen, whose family was apparently connected to some shady business based on the very brief google search Sansa allowed herself before moving on, and owner of The Three Dragons. The very thought of the club that Sansa nearly gone into far too many times nearly caused her to blush, but not today. Her shame of wanting alcohol and drugs and some fucking release was the last thing on her mind today.
This entire process happened over the course of a few seconds, allowing Sansa to reply, “Thank you for coming, Ms. Targaryen,” before it appeared too suspicious that she hadn’t known someone attending her own father’s memorial.
