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neilgansey · 5 years

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[jaime x sansa] thin ice 2/?

is this a chapter? let’s call it that. look at me, actually continuing a fic i said i’d continue

cont. of thin ice

There had been loss.

Too much loss. The army of the dead were unyielding and incessant, and it seemed that no matter how much smoke went up in the air, how many shrieks faded into the vast darkness that surrounded them, more spawned in their place, as easily replaced as water in a river.

And as the dead went, so did the living.

Yohn Royce, Podrick Payne, The Hound, to name a few.

People who, at one point or another in her life, had changed it for the better. Had stepped up and protected her and aided her and were now gone because of a battle nobody wanted to fight but everybody had to.

It was with stony silence that she allowed Jon to address their troops, their folk, the lords and ladies holed up in Winterfell, feeling more bleak by the minute. With stony silence and composed air; she was the Lady of Winterfell. They will not see me break.

And so they didn’t.

But Arya– stupid, stubborn Arya, was insistent on going out into the fighting. Gods knew her sister was a trained killer nowadays, but she was still her sister, and Sansa felt utterly helpless as she stood back and let everybody she loved put their lives on the line.

It made something ugly and constricting claw its way up her throat as she walked into the sept; it felt colder these days. Colder than it had ever been, and she was shivering under the thick furs wrapped around her.

Sansa didn’t know how long she was in there, praying. Praying, and praying and praying, as if perhaps if she did it a thousand different ways, the Seven would hear her.

At some point, she started crying.

In the darkness and solace of the Winterfell sept – unused and unvisited by the Northerners – she allowed the tears to fall; she allowed herself to crumble where nobody would see her, where she didn’t have to be a pillar of strength for all who relied on her.

Lady had been with her. Sansa realised, as she looked up through bleary eyes to reach for her wolf’s fur, the comforting warmth much needed in this moment, that she’d left.

Even Lady had left.

Worn out and exhausted and with a knot in her throat, Sansa prayed through the tears until she couldn’t cry any longer and the sticky tracks down her cheeks were all that remained of her lapse in fortitude.

“Lady Sansa?”

She’d barely had time to look up at the sound of the voice when Lady reappeared next to her, to settle her head on her lap and look up at her with gentle eyes. As if she’d brought him with her. Sniffing back, Sansa praised the darkness as she glanced over her shoulder at Jaime Lannister. “Yes, Ser Jaime?”

A moment’s silence, before the sound of soft footsteps approached. “I thought perhaps some trouble might’ve befallen you. Lady was quite insistent in bringing me here.”

So she had. Sansa’s eyes flickered down to the wolf, accusing and questioning at the same time. Why him, Lady?

“Some trouble has befallen all of us.” It was painfully evident in her voice that she’d been crying. She so wished she had a handkerchief on her.

As if reading her mind, the Kingslayer’s good hand extended out next to her, holding one. Pressing her lips together, Sansa looked up at him, face shrouded in darkness, silhouetted by the faint glow of the candles she’d lit. “Thank you,” she added quietly.

Jaime bowed his head and turned his body towards the statue of the Mother she’d been kneeling in front of. “You don’t pray to the Old Gods?”

“No,” she replied. “My mother raised us with a septa. The Old Gods were father’s realm.”

More silence. It seemed to etch on forever. Sansa felt restless in her own skin, fingers tangled up in Lady’s fur.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, with his face still turned away, Jaime Lannister said, “I know my word means nothing to you. But I am sorry... Sansa. For everything your family has suffered at the hands of mine.”

She stared up at his golden head, all she could see of him under the heavy furs he himself donned. He was sorry. What was there to be sorry for? Or rather, how could one person be sorry for so much? Hadn’t he stood idly by while it all happened? Hadn’t he stood with Cersei through everything she’d done? Perhaps the Kingslayer himself didn’t have Stark blood on his hands, but he had been in the splash zone while everyone around him did.

So why didn’t she hate him?

Why did she respect him?

Taking a deep breath, Sansa patted Lady on the head and stood, watching as he turned to look at her, almost warily. “The time for condolences is long past, Ser Jaime.”

A shadow crept across his eyes, and his head lifted a fraction, as if to nod but thought better of it. “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted, with a ghost of a smile at the corner of his lips. Not the arrogant sort she was used to seeing upon them. It looked like he wanted to say something else, but held back.

Lady stalked forward, as it never surprised her to see these days, and rubbed her head against Jaime’s side, until his hand fell to her head as well, scratching lightly. The image caused something to stir inside her. What did it mean, that Lady, her unfailing companion, who saw through everybody that meant her harm, behaved this way with him? As if she were loyal to him, when he’d never given her reason to be?

“She likes you,” Sansa pointed out, somewhat lamely, as if she’d given up on the matter.

It drew a soft laugh from under the thick beard the man had taken to wearing. “Yes, I’m lucky like that, it seems.”

You don’t know just how lucky. “I believe you’re a man of your word. She must see it, too.” That, and something else. Something else she sees that I don’t.

The gold of his hand glowed in the candlelight, drawing her eyes to it. Lannister gold. The golden hand of who was once the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms. It must have weighed the weight of loss. The heaviest weight there was. After all, Sansa was well acquainted with it.

Jaime saw her staring at it and seemed to shift, uncomfortable. Feeling her face flush at being caught, Sansa folded the handkerchief and stepped up towards him to hold it out towards him.

Eyes dragging up from the piece of cloth to her face, Jaime placed his good hand at her fingers, allowing them to fold over it. “Keep it. It’s the most good I could do to you in coming; it might satisfy your wolf."

Nodding, Sansa took it back, forcing away from her mind the feeling of his hand over hers. Warm and steady. There was a moment of silent eye contact before she looked away. “No,” she added as she gathered her furs around her shoulders. “I appreciated the company.”

Without sparing another look at him, she turned, pleased to see that Lady followed. “Goodnight, Ser Jaime.”

–

“Brienne,” Sansa spoke up as they stood near a window, the large woman next to her, hand at the hilt of her sword

“Yes, my lady?”

She turned her face away from the Winterfell courtyard, where Jaime Lannister was knocking swords against the large redheaded wildling. He seemed to be losing. “You seem to know Jaime Lannister better than anybody here.” Brienne only stared at her, waiting for further question. “Lady’s quite taken with him,” she continued bitterly. “I don’t understand why. Perhaps you could shed some light on the situation.”

Brienne looked at the wolf in question with a frown before turning back to Sansa. “I wouldn’t pretend to understand how Lady behaves, my lady...”

“No,” Sansa agreed, toying with her sleeve. A thread was beginning to come loose. “No, but Lady is very particular about the people she trusts that way. She doesn’t even behave like that with my own brothers and sister. Nor with you... what makes him so special? He’s a Lannister.”

There was a momentary pause, in which Brienne also looked back to the window to where the man had been knocked back. “He was born a Lannister, that is true. I may be so bold as to say that is a burden he carries, not a trophy.”

The answer didn’t satisfy her. “You said he treated you honourably before. I know my mother freed him from Robb’s prison to try to exchange him for me. What has he done that’s redeemed him so?”

“He’s a good man, my lady. I would stake my life on that. The rumours that circle him leave some truth out of them. I believe Ser Jaime is someone who wants to do the right thing, and will find a way to do it.”

Yes. He had left his sister to join them up North, after all. Tyrion trusted him. So did Bran, and Brienne. And now Lady.

“He sent me to find you, you know,” Brienne continued. Sansa looked up at her questioningly. “At King’s Landing. He provided me with armour and this sword... made from your father’s sword, to use it to protect you.”

Sansa watched her for a moment, unsure, glancing back towards Jaime in the snow, shaking it out of his hair as he adjusted his left-handed grip on the other half of her father’s sword.

“He’s never mentioned that.”

Brienne gave her a small smile. “For all that he likes to boast about the things that don’t matter, Jaime Lannister is not the sort of man who seeks praise for the things that do.”

And Jaime Lannister chose that moment to swing his sword around and look up, meeting Sansa’s gaze out the window, and in that moment, her breath caught in her throat and she understood.

#jaimsa #got fic #jaimsa fic #sansalannistark #jaimeofhouselannister #jaime x sansa #sansa x jaime #writing #writing: got

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