Sansa swallowed hard and dry, My mother and brothers are all dead.
Suddenly, the bright blue skies adorned with soft puffs of white and faint streaks of light seem a cruel jape at the maiden’s expense. Her eyelids flutter rapidly, trying to catch the tears before they fully form. And that is what happened to Bran and Rickon, isn’t it? Caught before they were fully formed. Rickon didn’t even get to ride his first horse yet or grip his first training sword. Bran would never truly know what it is like to blush at a fair maiden. She tried to think of a time they had angered the Gods, but she never thought of one.
She could never forgive the Seven for being so cruel.
Or perhaps it was the Old Gods she should be blaming, or neither. Maybe fate was beyond all else’s blame, though she could hardly believe that with such agony tearing through her. Her head ached, mind conjuring up all sorts of memories she couldn’t let go of just yet. Her heavy heart felt all the more heavy for it, but it wasn’t as though she could be blamed for this, though she was sure the Lannisters would find such a way.
She heard the echo of their voices from another room, their cruel laughter and their secretive mutterings. For a brief moment, all her grief swelled into rage. They chopped off her father’s head – the most dutiful man in all the Seven Kingdoms! And Joffrey made her watch. Her nails dug furtherer into the fabric of her dress.
Gods knows what they did with Arya. She wished she could see her, know she was still breathing, that she wasn’t completely alone. Arya was a horrid sister who never did anything she was supposed to, but… She was her sister. All their lives, they broke bread with one another, played with one another, learned from Septa Mordane together, and even raised their direwolves together. After everything, she couldn’t find it in herself to loathe her sister. The Lannisters owned all her hatred now, marked with their seal of gold and lions.
They owned all of it, but the Freys and the Boltons were certainly renting some leftovers. It was their fault her mother didn’t even have a decent burial. It was their fault that her last flicker of hope had extinguished.
She forced her glassy blue eyes to seal shut, not allowing herself the luxury of tears. Her head leaned against the window plane, her body clinging to her only exit, as if there were was one. Even if she managed to escape them, they would drag her back. She should have escaped before, before she was bound by marriage.
Even as her husband approached her, it was with caution.
When he said her name, she could hardly understand the syllables. San-sa. What a silly thing to say. Her name meant nothing to her anymore, just mindless sounds she could no longer bear to hear. Perhaps if her name ended with Stark, rather than Lannister, she could feel herself again.
She didn’t reply, or perhaps she couldn’t. His mere presence was a reminder of her sham of a life. Rather than married to a handsome, honorable lord who loved her, like she might have been if she and Willas Tyrell joined their houses, she was married to the Imp. He was not a monster, this she understood. But he was a Lannister, and that was close enough.
He attempted to understand her, even enough to call it empathy. However, when he looked at her with those sad mismatched eyes of his, all she saw was a pathetic little man with the power of a villainous family behind him. He could not understand her, what it was like to lose everything one’s ever known.
He could not understand her wants, just like he couldn’t understand his own.