stones grow her name (asoiaf | sansa/margaery + dany)

[fiachairecht]

stones grow her name. a song of ice and fire - grrm, sansa/margaery + dany. alt-universe character study ft old gods and suicide. 867 words, rated t.

inspired by this post from ofhouseadama

No one who was of the South ever understood Sansa. Petyr looked at her and saw a daughter, or maybe a lover; he didn't see his death flying up to meet him as Sansa dropped him from the moon door sweetly, ever so sweetly. Cersei saw a usurper and she saw correctly, but she could never have predicted how systematically Sansa would destroy the Lannister power base. Margaery saw a partner, or maybe a sister or a lover, and she wasn't truly wrong. But as the night grows darker Sansa forgets what it means love anyone who is not from the North and stays with Margaery because she owes her, and Sansa will not settle debts on any terms but her own. They take the throne in King’s Landing together, because they don’t trust it to anyone else, and they take it with the knowledge that the seven kingdoms are falling apart and all they have left to do is minimise the damage to their friends during the death throes. 

The Night's Watch sweeps southward, pursued by nameless demons of ice and snow. Anyone who can fight does, and the ranks of the watch grow and grow - but everyone knows the battle is already lost and defeat is only a matter of time, no matter how many people rise and then fall. Arianne lets as many refugees in as she can, then seals the borders of Dorne, trusting her sun to keep her people safe. And everywhere, the old ones shake their heads and say: If only the Stark children were here. If only they had been able to hold together. But they aren't and they couldn't: Rickon's shelter in the ruins of Winterfell can last only as long as Melisandre's fires, Arya is still making her way north, and the rest of the Starks' bannermen have only plain fire to protect them and the night grows ever darker —

— Until the day Ned Stark's bastard reunites with Ned Stark's flame-haired second child, and the tide begins to turn, not fast enough or far enough for salvation but enough, perhaps, for hope. The Targaryen queen comes too late to claim her kingdom, and - she thinks at first - perhaps too late even to save it. Sansa meets her with Jon at her side while Margaery tends to relief efforts at Highgarden, and she looks at Daenerys' dragons and thinks: victory. And then she thinks: mine. She has precious little land to offer in return, not now, so instead she offers herself, and a promise: All these lands are yours, except the north. They draw boundaries in the sand and seal them with a kiss, and when Margaery returns three queens take three dragons to the skies while the Watch holds the line on the ground.

Sansa takes personal responsibility for clearing the North. And when she is sure the White Walkers are gone, and gone for good, she stays airborne long enough to give the people a proper show: three queens and three dragons, victorious. She looks at Margaery - they don't need words to apologise for the lives they might have had together. She looks at Daenerys - they don't need words to confirm that Daenerys will preserve the sovereignty of the North, with her own blood if need be. And Sansa jumps, and dies in Jon Snow's arms, and her last gift to him is a Stark name.

So her bones come home with her newly-named brother, and when they do Rickon and Arya feel their own bones grow cold and tremble in sympathy. The two who came closest to losing their family name find it again in their sister's rigid corpse and brittle hair. Rickon has always sat the North's throne uneasy, well aware that it should have been Sansa's by all rights; Arya has always stood behind as his Hand uneasy as well, aching for the other half she lost in King's Landing. But now she’s home, and the ghost of winter's lady can roam the halls of Winterfell once again. Her hands Rickon takes, welds into Winterfell's throne as a monument to the woman who was denied her rule but taught northerners how to rule in her stead. The rest of her bones are laid to rest in the Godswood: not for Sansa are the dank enclosed tombs of ages past, not for winter's boundless queen to be confined in one coffin, not for her concrete and steel that would prevent her from rising again.

(Those of the north now remember why they distrusted the mausoleums in the first place, they now remember just how true all the old stories are.)

Centuries pass, and Sansa Stark's face is still the only one to be worn by the trees of Winterfell's Godswood. Centuries pass, and visitors cease to be surprised when their dogs curl around the biggest tree and cannot be coaxed away until the visit is over. Centuries pass, and Rickon’s children and their children's children remind Sansa every day: Winterfell lives on, my queen, the Starks live on. Centuries pass, and Sansa watches, and Sansa waits, and Sansa prepares to rise again on the day Winterfell needs her.