Chapter Text
Eventually Meg had started to cry.
The tension had risen in the Cavern with every hour passing, still with no sign of Dard Waynwood or Torrhen. Everyone was asking the same questions, whether they dared speak the words aloud or not. Were they dead? Injured? Had the Walkers finally returned from King’s Landing to eradicate the remnants of the North? Eventually, the worry and fear became too much for young Meg, and the former washerwoman collapsed into a fit of frightened tears. Betha comforted her, wrapping a thin old arm around the trembling shoulders of her friend.
“They might just be delayed,” Sansa had suggested. “They might just be waiting somewhere until it is safe enough to return.” Her optimism was false.
Fortunately, the two children were outside at the time. Once those two were set off by crying, the cave would echo with demanding toddler sobs for hours, Brass and Little Sam each trying their hardest to outdo the other. Sansa massaged her temples as she walked into the tunnel leading to Bran’s chamber, needing to be alone to think and consider what to do next. An ache was starting to pound under her skull. If Ser Dard and Torrhen were indeed killed, and the Walkers came back, this cave system would quickly cease to be a shelter, and become their shared tomb. But leaving was equally dangerous, and Sansa wished badly to rest the responsibility of the decision on someone else’s shoulders.
They were all, bizarrely, still looking to her. Queen, they called her. Lady of Winterfell. It was ironic, how badly she had desired the power and security of that title, and now all she wanted was to cast it away. She could not help wondering if Petyr would have been proud of her, or if he would suggest another path. As much as she acknowledged she had been betrayed by him, he had often given better advice than anyone else in terms of staying alive. Although, being trapped underground had never featured in any of his lessons, and perhaps he would have been entirely useless in this situation.
Sansa lifted her skirts over the craggy surface of the cave floor, and entered Bran’s chamber. The golden light of the candles flickered from the disturbance of her entrance. To her surprise, she found someone else already kneeling next to her brother’s unconscious body.
“Lady Sansa.” Jaime Lannister scrambled to his feet when she came in.
“Ser Jaime,” she said. “Don’t get up.”
He looked somewhat ruffled, as if she had interrupted a deep thought of his and left it unfinished, hanging half-complete where he left it.
“If you want to be with your brother, I will leave you alone,” Jaime offered politely, recovering any lost composure.
“No, stay a while,” Sansa told him, walking into the candlelit chamber. “I need to speak to you, actually.” She sat, arranging her skirts around herself. Jaime did the same, on the opposite side of Bran’s body. “Ser Dard and Torrhen have still not returned,” she informed him, arriving at the point at once.
Jaime frowned, nodding, and appeared to consider that grim fact.
“I’m due next on patrol with Inett soon,” he pointed out seriously. “We’ll try our best to find them.”
“If they are dead…” Sansa clasped her hands on her lap, and looked at Bran’s peaceful sleeping face. “That leaves just thirteen of us who can fight.”
“And only twelve who can fight well,” he admitted drolly, holding up his stump.
She raised her piercing eyes and examined Jaime closely. As always, despite the grimy appearance of all the Cavern residents, he emitted a certain handsome aura of golden arrogance. His grey-gold fringe was hanging over his sharp green eyes, which were examining her just as intently in return. There was more intelligence behind this Lannister’s weary, superior smile than most people ever gave him credit for. It was Jaime, not Yohn Royce, or Bronn, or anyone else, who had settled with the idea of digging the trenches around the rock formation. It was Jaime who had rallied their men and protected the people running from the castle of Hornwood. Sansa had reluctantly gained a respect for him over the months they had been together; a respect which, surprisingly, had little to do with Brienne’s frequent longing stares and occasional rambling about her lover’s supposed honour and goodness.
Sansa took a steady breath. “What do you believe we should do?” she asked, as neutrally as possible.
Jaime set his jaw at that question. If the knight was surprised that she had asked for his opinion, he covered it well.
“Leave,” he decided after a moment. “Now, before the Walkers return to this area. Those ravens are not returning, and neither are the scouts we sent. We had better move quickly before it is too late. I know that you decided to stay for your people, but there is nothing we can do for them even while we continue to shelter here.”
Sansa swallowed her nerves.
“So we travel to White Harbour,” she tried the words out aloud, imagining the startled reaction of the others. “Nearly two hundred miles, the twenty of us, with wights swarming the country.”
He shrugged ruefully.
“There is no other way,” he told her. “Despite the danger, we can’t stay here and wait for the Walkers to come and find us.”
Sansa gently smoothed a crease in her dress, choosing to ignore the patronising tone of his voice. “I know nothing of military matters, I’m afraid,” she admitted, in the interest of keeping him on her side. “So I respect your opinion. Lord Royce has advised me in a similar way before.”
“They all respect you very much,” he commented, aloof in his half-praise.
“They’re good people,” Sansa replied. It annoyed him, she realised, that she was the one they followed. A prideful lion, having to obey the wolves. It must bother him.
However, Jaime had shrugged off the wounds to his pride, and smiled in a friendlier way which set her somewhat at ease.
“You should know,” he began, with an air of divulging sensitive information, “that Bronn intends to pursue you.” He chuckled, more to himself than to her. “I do not imagine he would be pleased to learn that I gave up the game, but he made the mistake of not making me swear an oath of secrecy to him.”
Sansa ran her fingers through her long red hair and tossed the strands over her shoulder with an uninterested attitude.
“If it is a secret, he is not keeping it very well himself,” she laughed dismissively. “I’ve known what he intends for a while now.”
“I see.” Jaime was trying to weigh up her reaction, she could tell. Let him, Sansa thought. She had little interest in a sellsword who could offer nothing but himself.
“It’s ironic, you know,” she continued, on the subject at hand. “Your marriage to Brienne, given her oath to me, will be the closest our families have come to a marriage alliance since myself and Lord Tyrion.”
As she had hoped, that disarmed the golden knight. He looked away, with a distant, fond expression. Whether he was thinking of his dwarf brother or the warrior woman, Sansa was unsure, but he was definitely not lost in memory. She cocked her head inquisitively, remembering how Brienne had spoken up for the man she loved in the hall of Winterfell. The desperation in her sapphire eyes, the intensity of her resolve to defend his already disgraced name…it had been a devotion which stunned everyone into silence.
“You truly love her, don’t you?” Sansa said, not exactly asking.
Jaime’s lip curled. “With every breath,” he declared, without a hint of embarrassment. Perhaps her expression had given away some of her disbelief. “Is that so odd?” he asked, amused.
“No,” Sansa said at once, shaking her head. “After all the things I’ve seen, very little strikes me as odd.”
Thoughts of unlikely love made her somewhat uncomfortable. Her own heart had been hardened beyond such things, so she preferred to believe. She turned her gaze back to Bran, reaching for his limp, weak hand. The skin clung to his finger bones, and his skinny wrist felt very breakable. His poor face was gaunt and sickly, fading all the more every day. Yes, they had to leave. She had to take her brother’s body out of this cave, perhaps even reunite it with his consciousness, wherever it had flown or run on other legs. They had been hiding too long.
“I pushed him.”
Sansa raised her eyes in surprise. Jaime was looking at Bran with a kind of tormented guilt written into the lines of his face.
“I know,” she heard herself say while her mind raced. “He told me himself.”
Jaime met her searching gaze.
“Bran was generous enough to offer his forgiveness,” he told her. “I do not believe I deserved it, but he forgave me all the same.”
The confession was unexpected. They had been in such close proximity for months, yet neither side had tried to bring up the underlying hatreds between their families. Even Arya had managed to keep her mouth shut about the presence of a Lannister in their midst. Sansa tried to figure out why Jaime would say this now, suspicious of motive. Everyone is your enemy. Everyone is your friend. Those were Petyr’s words, and like all of his teachings, they still had a resonance within her mind.
“I understand, perhaps, why you did it,” she said, determined not to let him know that she suspected him of trying to create conflict. “We all do terrible things to protect our families, things that are hard to think about before the moment arrives and an impossible choice is set before us.”
Jaime actually stared at her, and shook his head in bemusement.
“I can see so much of Catelyn in you,” he told her, but quickly moved beyond his appreciation of the similarity. “I don’t suppose I have any right to apologise for all that my family did to yours,” he said regretfully.
“No, you do not have that right.” Sansa frowned. Was that what he wanted? To apologise? Perhaps she was jumping to the wrong conclusions.
“Maybe if this night does end,” Jaime mused aloud to her, “things will be different.”
Sansa relaxed slightly, choosing to look past her own prejudice about the Lannisters. It did appear that he was trying to build a metaphorical bridge over a torrent of mass murder and betrayals. It would make sense, she thought briefly, given his invested interest in marrying her sworn protector.
“If the night ends, perhaps,” Sansa agreed, and allowed herself some room for civility. “It’s strange,” she commented. “You’re not at all how I thought you were, before. Brienne’s very lucky to have you.”
Relief brightened his dark expression. “You’re also very different to what I thought you were,” he replied.
“Perhaps I was forced to grow up,” Sansa suggested, feeling a slight hint of a blush colouring her cheeks.
“So was I,” Jaime said self-deprecatingly. “In all honesty, I have Brienne to thank for that.”
That confirmed it, then; he was making this step of trust out of consideration for his future wife. Sansa, now convinced of his sincerity, smiled in complete honesty herself. The vanity in her heart created its own speculation about whether Ser Jaime would now follow her like the others, and even if he secretly admired her like Lord Royce, but logic told her that the Lannister was still as proud as ever. Sansa started to ponder the fact that, under other circumstances, she might have ended up married to him instead of Tyrion. How different things may have turned out…
Jaime got up after a moment, and brushed down his red leather tunic and furs with his only gloved hand.
“I should begin the search now,” he said brusquely. “Make the most of the daylight.”
Before he left, she quickly rose to her feet and stopped him. The candlelight brought out the gold in his hair, a colour increasingly dimmed by his age.
“Ser Jaime,” she said, and he turned. “If we don’t make it to White Harbour, I want to thank you.”
“For what, Sansa?” He used her first name only, she noted.
“None of us would have made it this far without your leadership,” she pointed out. Flattery generally endeared people to those as proud as this man.
“Well,” he replied, and shifted slightly. “Without your diplomacy, they probably would have killed me, so I think we’re even.” He nodded uncertainly then, and turned to go again, perhaps uncomfortable with the shift in their perceptions of each other.
“See you this evening,” he called back.
“Good luck.”
Sansa waited until he was gone, and then let out a breath she had not realised she was holding. Her heart was pounding, she thought, somewhat confused. Was she truly this girlishly unsettled by a mere conversation? It was a reason to be pleased, this move towards a better understanding between Starks and Lannisters. If Tyrion had lived, so much the better, because then both of the brothers would be on her side. She shook off the weird sensation in her abdomen that she was tumbling, falling and sinking downwards.
Sitting beside Bran again, she considered the condition of their sled, and whether they could easily pull it without horses. Perhaps if she sent scouts to the nearby abandoned villages, they could find horses still living. The wights generally ignored animals, as far as she knew. Her mind spun with thoughts of how they should pack and gather supplies for the journey, how they should set up camp each night, and whether it would be safer to travel during the day or night. It was frightening, all of it, but she grabbed Bran’s skinny hand and knew she had to hold her strength together.
Sansa no longer believed in the gods the way she once did. But, despite that, she liked to believe that her mother’s spirit was nearby, and her father’s and her brothers’. Even Petyr was maybe close, she thought, if he no longer resented her for ordering his death. He might be near, watching over her, proud of his student’s cleverness.
All the many ghosts…all the many people left behind…all of them leading her to a destiny, or a doom.
Sansa rose to her feet, and strode towards the main cave to give orders.