A/N: *Casually raises this fic from the dead.* Happy Father's Day to the Night King, I guess.

Also: I am short of time right now, but I will start replying to reviews as I am able. Thank you! :D

Casterly Rock

The Lannisters have always seemed perfect to Sansa Stark. Both to the girl she was when the elegant family first visited Winterfell and the girl has become in her years at Casterly Rock. From their fine manners to their even finer clothes they have always seemed grand and wondrous and everything that is spoken of as being noble in ballads and tales. Even their hair is red and gold, no drab brunettes among them. Lord Tyrion's stature could be considered a large mark against them, and yet to see him with his wife, to hear his wit, to see how his children adore him… Yes, Sansa was convinced the Lannisters were perfect, and she extremely lucky to be betrothed to the eldest son and befriended by the only daughter of the main branch of said House.

Then came the Long Night and those horrible days spent hiding in a smithy with Ser Jaime. She learned then that what she saw on the surface of her soon to be family was just that - skin deep. Aunt Sansa, whom Sansa has always striven to emulate, is not her true aunt at all, but a woman from a far flung land where people have strange powers. Her name isn't even Sansa, but Natasha, and she shares her bed with both her lord husband and his brother, often at the same time.

It is not, Sansa thinks in the most secret corner of her heart, that she cannot see the appeal. Lord Tyrion is wise and gentle and kind, and quite funny and sweet when he likes a person. Ser Jaime is tall and handsome and strong and there is something boyish about him. An eagerness to please. Yes, Sansa thinks, she understands the desire very well. But to actually act on it baffles her. How could Aunt San- Lady Natasha do such a thing to her husband? Would she be so sanguine if Lord Tyrion also had a lover?

Sansa gets no opportunity to ask any such questions, as while Gerion escorts her back to Casterly Rock, Tasha, Lady Natasha, and Ser Jaime disappear into the wilds to find Jon and bring him home. (Sansa lights candles for them in the sept every night. She can't allow herself to believe that it's already too late. That to find one man in this chaos is impossible. She can't think they have thrown their lives away for nothing, for that will make it true somehow. So she prays.)

She considers asking Gerion, or even Lord Tyrion, about what she has learned, but decides against it when she considers the look on her love's face when he adamantly declared Lord Tyrion to be his father. Whether he is more incensed about the implication he may be a bastard or that his father is routinely cuckolded by his own brother, Sansa isn't sure, but she is wily enough now after her years of tutelage in the great game to know it is a sore subject. So Sansa does what she does best. She smiles and makes sure everyone is as comfortable as possible and twitters about as if she has no idea of what is happening in the world outside the Rock's walls. It forces those around her to pretend as well lest they upset her 'delicate sensibilities,' stealing an hour here and snatching a few minutes there where they let themselves laugh and put their troubles aside.

And while she does this, she observes. She observes that Arya has known more of the truth of the Lannisters far longer than Sansa has, and that the younger Stark sister misses Tasha like a limb. At least Clynt is able to commiserate, for Tasha is his twin and never before have they been so long apart. As Sansa watches, the second Lannister son and Arya grow closer and closer, leaning on each other to fill the hole Tasha has left behind.

She observes that Lord Tyrion loves his wife and children deeply. It is no act, the way he gazes over the battlements with longing writ upon his face. The way he smiles at his remaining children and makes sure to see each of them at least once a day. She is flattered to be included in that number, knowing the Starks would not have treated a Lannister ward as well. Not when they couldn't even accept Jon, who was their own flesh and blood.

(Is, she corrects herself. Jon is still alive. He has to be.)

Lastly, Sansa observes that Gerion, her betrothed, is preoccupied with something. Though he still smiles and treats her with every courtesy, he is more distant everyday, warmth lacking in his eyes, his smiles empty things. Theirs has always been a courtly love, but Sansa has always thought it was because Gerion was catering to her preferences, knowing how she enjoyed chivalry and the dance of etiquette.

Now that she knows the Lannisters are not perfect, Sansa wonders.

Does Gerion hold any regard for her at all? Or is he paying lip service to a maiden he finds as lively as a doll and about as interesting, all in the name of the great game? Does he love another, and is that why he is so distant? Or is he simply weighed down with the concerns of the Westerlands, which are no small thing at the moment, given the that the dead walk and they must ration their food without knowing when they will be able to get more.

It is probably that, or concern for the members of their family outside the Rock, Sansa concludes after some thought. With how Gerion feels about his mother playing Lord Tyrion false, he would not do the same to Sansa, his future wife. His honor - a facet of him that she has concluded is real and true down to his very bones - will not allow it. (And it is very reminiscent of Sansa's own mother, the disgraced Catelyn, to hold such suspicions. There is madness in her blood. Sansa won't let it consume her.)

So instead of pressing him, Sansa focuses on doing what she can to relieve his burden. Leaving Lord Tyrion and Gerion to worry over the Westerlands as a whole, Sansa turns her attention to the Rock itself. With Lady Natasha gone and Tasha gone with her, only Great Aunt Genna Lannister is left to manage the household, and she is getting on in years. So Sansa steps up to claim the duties of Lady Lannister as her own. Aunt Genna huffs at her, and goes over Sansa's every decision with a gimlet eye, but she allows herself to be usurped purely because Sansa will be Lady Lannister in truth one day.

Lady Natasha's other duties that Sansa has only recently discovered, those of the Black Widow, are a bit beyond her, Sansa will readily admit. Thankfully Clynt and Arya have stepped into that capacity, spinning their webs while Gerion and Lord Tyrion rule and Sansa minds the castle.

It is only a scant month or so after her rescue from Lannisport when she is summoned to Lord Tyrion's study and thanked for her diligence in her duties and informed that in light of the circumstances she will be wedding Gerion immediately in a small ceremony. With half the family who knows where and what seems like all the world at war, they must act to secure the ruling line with as many heirs as possible.

It is not the grand wedding that she has always dreamed of, but Sansa is not a little girl anymore. She may now be a Lady Lannister, but she was born a Wolf of Winterfell, and she has the steel of the wolfsblood within her. So she raises no fuss when her wedding turns out to be a simple one witnessed only by family and what servants wish to attend. She utters no complaint that her wedding feast is hardly worthy of the name, not when winter is upon them. And upon her wedding night she offers her body and her heart to her beloved without reservation, and prays to the Mother that she will swell with child soon.

Gerion is attentive and considerate of her in their bedchamber, but even there he seems distant from her at times, holding her close as if she is the most precious thing in the world one moment and miles away though she is still in his arms the next. If she did not know him so well, she would never be able to tell the difference.

"I am glad to have you, Sansa," he whispers in her ear one night when he thinks her already asleep. (Or perhaps he knows she is awake but wants her to think he doesn't. Sansa sees now that one can never tell with Lannisters.) "Never doubt that. You can't know what it means that you have loved me without falter from almost the moment we met. Sometimes I think you are the only one in the world who loves me so."

She notices that he says nothing of loving her in return and her heart breaks a little. But men, even men raised by Lady Natasha, can be peculiar about such things, so Sansa does her best to put it from her mind and continue on as she always has. Lady Knight Brienne shadows her faithfully as she moves through the Rock's halls, glad the castle is so enormous for it keeps her from feeling cooped up now that it is no longer safe to venture outside the walls.

They recieve word from the Vale that Lady Natasha and Ser Jaime and Tasha have arrived there and are guests of Gerion's cousin Lord Joffrey Arryn. Like the Rock, the Eyrie is built into a mountain and so is better protected from the eldritch forces arrayed against them than the seats of the other kingdoms. They begin trying to coordinate a defense.

The next raven brings word that Lady Natasha is with child. Gerion's face turns black as a storm cloud and Lord Tyrion's mouth goes slack before he pastes on a smile as empty as any of the ones Gerion offers to Sansa. It takes her an embarrassingly long time to realize that they are displeased not because Lady Natasha is with child and away from the safety of the Rock, but because the timing is wrong for the child to be Lord Tyrion's. Ser Jaime must be the father then, unless Lady Natasha's morals are even looser than Sansa realizes.

But Lord Tyrion is a kind man who deeply loves his wife. He gives no indication beyond that first moment of shock that he even suspects the child of not being his.

Sansa finds herself wishing sometimes that she was born earlier and not so silly as a child, so that she could be Tyrion's wife instead of Gerion's, if only to know what it feels like to be loved so well. She would be a good and faithful wife to him, just as she is to Gerion though she increasingly thinks that Gerion regards her as a chore rather than a companion.

Then she scolds herself for having such horrid thoughts, and goes to pray to the Mother and the Maiden for guidance. She sews clothes for Lady Natasha's new babe that the child will never wear since Sansa has no way of sending them before the babe outgrows them, but it makes her feel like less of a wretch. (Less like Catelyn the Mad, who scorned Jon for his supposed bastardy and encouraged her children to do the same.) Someone will need the clothes eventually, so the effort and materials shall not be wasted.

Clynt is delighted at the possibility of a new sibling, sharing Tasha's strange attitude toward the Lannister brothers both being involved with Lady Natasha, regarding both men as a father. Arya cares not at all, though she knows.

"Not my business, is it?" Arya says blithely when Sansa tries to subtly gather her sister's thoughts on the matter. A strange attitude for a spy to have, is all she can think of her sister's thoughts. But then she has already admitted that while she has come far from the girl she once was, she is not even close to being an acolyte of the Black Widow. Not the way Arya and Clynt and especially Tasha are. (And Gerion, whispers a voice inside that she ignores.)

Sansa misses Jon. Targaryen blood or not, he is even more forthright that she is and even less capable of the games these lions play than Sansa. It would be nice to have at least one person around who doesn't make her feel like an oblivious dunce.

(She isn't stupid. She isn't. She knows that. It's just that Lord Tyrion and Gerion are geniuses and Clynt and Arya are both naturally possessed of a certain sly cunning that Sansa has to work at. She'll match them one day. She's learning all the time.)

Gerion continues to be surly and disagreeable over the news of Lady Natasha's latest babe, at least in private, but Sansa finds it almost a relief. A Gerion who is sour and hurt and short tempered is preferable to one who offers her empty smiles. For the first time since Lannisport, he is present and real in his dealings with Sansa, and it makes for such a nice change that she doesn't care one whit that he's being a boor. She never would have thought that she would cherish her husband's frowns more than his grins, but she is increasingly coming to value ugly truths over pretty lies. No matter how unsavory, she would rather know. If her husband is a brooding complicated mess of a man beneath the courtly masks he wears, that's fine so long as it is true.

When the news comes that Tasha has hared off into the wild, still determined to find Jon, Sansa is unsurprised. Tasha is the most like Lord Tyrion of all her siblings. It makes sense that she would love Jon the way Lord Tyrion loves Lady Natasha.

-l-

Clynt and Arya grow even more codependent, making up stories about the grand adventures Tasha must be having and the pranks they are going to play on her for leaving them behind. Lord Tyrion starts drinking more than is perhaps prudent and writes letters back and forth with Lady Natasha and Ser Jaime, trying to choose a name for the new babe. Or at least that's what the letters say on the face of it. Sansa would not be surprised anymore if there was a code hidden somehow in the missives, discussing things she cannot even begin to guess at.

When the child is born she is reported as being Cersei Lannister come again, emerging from the womb with silky golden curls already upon her head. Lord Tyrion announces the news at dinner one evening, and reports with tear filled eyes that the girl's name is Tyria. That Ser Jaime insisted upon it.

Sansa does not think she will ever understand.

Gerion takes the news strangely. He stops being surly in Sansa's company and tries to return to his courtly ways, but is still more present than before. It feels, this time, as if he is really trying, honestly and truly, to love her. The first time they lay together after the news comes is frantic and wild and fast and wonderful. It is passionate - something Sansa hadn't known was missing from their previous couplings. Gerion always made sure she was satisfied before spilling his seed within her, but it was a courtesy he was performing. A duty he was completing to the best of his ability. A polite, routine act.

This? This is hunger.

It's amazing, how large the difference is between the two things. The same actions, the same bodies, the same people, and yet so far apart in feeling and sensation that they could be across the Narrow Sea from each other.

Overwhelmed, Sansa weeps and doesn't know why.

"It isn't anything you've done," she assures Gerion when he hushes her and holds her close, stroking her hair. His touch is gentle, but his fingers calloused, strands of her hair catching on the roughened skin. "You haven't done anything."

Perhaps that is the truth of it. He hasn't done anything. He is not cruel, but he does not love her.

Sansa knows she has no real cause for complaint. Gerion has never been malicious nor taken another woman to his bed to her knowledge, and that is more than many highborn women can say of their husbands. It is just hard, to be so surrounded by people so desperately in love and not be one of them.

Gerion sighs and kisses her eyes, then her nose, then her lips. "I don't deserve you, Sansa," his whispers against her neck, his red hair mingling with her own.

Sansa's silence is damning.

-l-

Sansa's first babe is born a few months after the fall of King's Landing. They receive news of it from the Vale after Dowager Queen Margaery shows up there clutching the blue body of the infant prince. The little one miraculously makes it to the Vale, but dies soon after he and his mother are taken into Lord Joffrey's protection. The queen offers to marry Joffrey and so make him a king, but Sansa rather doubts that the Lannisters will allow such a thing when all the Baratheons are dead and Tasha is married to Jon, who has a better claim to the throne than anyone else thanks to being Rhaegar's son. Not that it matters one way or another since the Iron Throne is probably little more than scrap metal now, based on the accounts she has heard of the siege.

Lady Margaery (Sansa doubts she is still considered a queen, nor will she ever be one again) includes a separate letter for Gerion. Sansa doesn't know what it says, but that night Gerion lavishes attention on her and their newborn son, Tybolt Lannister, Second of his Name. Gerion's gaze is tender and his expression both sorrowful and yet unrestrained in a way it never has been with Sansa before. And when she puts their son to bed for the evening, Gerion gathers her close and weeps into her bosom, his ragged voice saying, "Thank all the gods for you, Sansa. Thank all the gods for you."

Sansa would like to think that Gerion has finally warmed to her because she has borne him a son. That he is able to love her at last when he realizes the treasure she has given him, that he is so enthralled by Tybolt's scrunchy red face and equally red hair that he can't help but see the woman that has been standing before him, just waiting to be noticed. That he can't stop himself from adoring her when he sees the perfect babe they made together.

But Sansa knows now that Lannisters are not perfect.

She retrieves the letter from the hollow table leg where Gerion keeps all his most important personal missives, the place that he thinks is secret but was shown to Sansa by Tasha several years ago. (And now she wonders, does Gerion know that they know? Does he plant false notes for them to find? You can never tell with Lannisters.)

Lady Margaery's handwriting is florid and even enough to belong to a scribe. Her name and the former titles she clings to stand out at the bottom, the letters heavy with flourishes. The only other word that leaps out in such a way is the name of Lady Margaery's brother, 'Loras,' and it stands out for the opposite reason. It is the only place where the penmanship is less fine, the letters shaky and the ink blotched. Sansa recalls that Ser Loras is Gerion's dearest friend outside of his family and folds the letter back up again, clutching it in a white knuckled grip, though she is careful not to wrinkle the page.

Ser Loras is likely dead based on the way his sister writes his name. Whatever else the letter says, it will not make him alive again, nor change the past. (Lady Catelyn would read it. Jealous and angry, she would read the letter and then maybe even confront her husband, depending upon what it said. Is Margaery Gerion's ladylove? Does he have a bastard? Did Loras act as a go between to help them hide their affair? These questions would prey on Catelyn's mind, and she would read the letter. Short sighted pride. There is madness in Sansa's blood, seeping through her veins.)

She decides that in this one instance, she does not want to know.

Gerion loves her now, or is beginning to. Whether his feelings have anything to do with whatever is contained in the letter is immaterial. Whatever his connection to the Tyrells, they are all dead now save Margaery and it is unlikely the two shall cross paths often, if they ever do at all.

Sansa knows that Lannisters are not perfect, but Gerion loves her now.

She will let it be enough.

-l-

The first news they have of Jon and Tasha comes not by raven, but on dragon wings. Sansa is in the nursery with Tybolt, who at six months already has a strong grip and suckles robustly at her breast, his blue eyes wide. He looks more a Tully than a Lannister, but that is only to be expected given that both of his grandmothers are Tullys, or pretending to be. He has started to develop a distinct personality and currently loves no one more than his Grandfather Tyrion, to Gerion's chagrin. Sansa just smiles when her husband grouses about being usurped from his rightful place in his son's esteem. It is just more proof to her that their boy takes after his father, for Gerion lights up in just the same way when Lord Tyrion enters a room.

When Tybolt has had his fill, Sansa fixes her dress and settles him down on a rug by the fire. In these troubled times there was no wet nurse to be had, every woman needing every drop of milk for their own babes. Sansa is glad. It is an experience not to be missed.

Lady pads over and snuffles at Tybolt, then curls around him. Sansa smiles, trusting that her faithful direwolf will look after her son as if he were the wolf's own. In fact, sometimes she fancies she can even hear Lady inside her head referring to the babe as "pup" and "brother," but of course those are just fanciful imaginings.

Lady cuddles Tybolt sweetly, letting him rest against her flank, his chubby fingers buried in the wolf's fur as he babbles at his canine friend. It is then that Sansa hears the tromp of booted feet and shouted orders along with panicked yelling. Clynt bursts into the nursery and scoops up Tybolt, tersely commanding her to follow him to one of the safe rooms hidden in the walls throughout the Rock. Sansa doesn't bother to ask him why, she just goes, snapping out "Wache!" at Lady as she stands to follow her good-brother.

Sansa hides alongside her son with Clynt to guard her for several candlemarks, ears straining for the sounds of battle. Tybolt is bundled in a basket with Lady on watch beside him so that Sansa's hands are free to hold the daggers she learned to wield from Lady Natasha. She never appreciated the skill being forced on her until this moment, resenting being made to do anything the girl she was saw as unladylike and unfamiliar with being the one who struggled while Arya was heaped with praise for her natural ability. But now, hiding in a safe room, wondering if she will be called upon to defend her babe with the blades in her hands, Sansa can only give thanks to Lady Natasha and her wonderful strange ways.

Arya comes to get them when things have been deemed safe again, but does not explain anything, instead leading Clynt and Sansa to the hidden war room in the family wing, Tybolt back in Sansa's arms and Lady trotting along behind them next to Arya's Nymeria.

When the door opens Sansa can hardly believe her eyes.

Jon and Tasha are standing there. They look strange and feel stranger, as if there is an air of expectation hanging around them, making the air thicker. But they are still themselves, for all that Jon's gotten broader and more solemn and looks somewhat windblown and sharp, like a sword that has been honed, and Tasha has slit pupils and claws like a cat.

In a world of myth and monsters, Sansa barely bothers to be puzzled.

"Sansa," Jon smiles at her, Tasha echoing him, revealing that she has fangs as well. It is exotically beautiful, the way Tasha now looks like a lion merged with a person. It is probably something that happens from time to time in Lady Natasha's home country given the stories that Gerion recites to Tybolt at night, saying they are part of his secret heritage. Wasn't there something about a man who becomes a green giant when angered? And another about a man with a metal heart and armor that he brought to life?

Claws and fangs don't seem that strange by comparison.

Tasha is thrilled to meet her first nephew, and Tybolt is not afraid of her at all. Perhaps he has inherited the bloodline's strength and senses from Gerion, and can tell that Tasha is his aunt and will not hurt him? They won't know for sure until he is old enough to perform some of the feats that only Lady Natasha's brood are capable of.

When everyone is seated at the round table that dominates the room, Sansa learns that the reason for the panic a few hours ago is that Jon and Tasha arrived on the back of a dragon and that three others accompanied them. Daenerys the Black, Tasherys the Green, Lyanna the White, and Starkfire of the Dawn.

Jon looks rather sheepish. Tasha smugly announces that rather than a winged wolf, the Pendragon sigil will henceforth be a single dragon rampant.

The rest of the evening is devoted to a recount of their doings since Jon left the Rock nearly three years ago.

-l-

"And so then we returned to the Three Sisters and liberated the other two islands as I promised and installed Jon's Northern subjects there where they will be somewhat safe. The boats we cobbled together wouldn't have made it much farther than that in any case." Tasha concludes. She is the Lady of the Sisters now, having been confirmed in the title by Lord Joffrey when she and Jon stopped in the Vale before continuing on their way to Casterly Rock.

And Jon…

Jon is the king.

Already the North and the Vale have sworn to him, and there is no reason that Lord Tyrion would refuse him the Westerlands when Tasha is his queen. The Riverlands and the Reach have fallen, the Crownlands are destroyed, and the Stormlands and Dorne are in chaos. No one has heard from the Iron Islands, and hopefully no one will until this mess is long over. Jon is king of the only people who matter now, and will have to conquer and resettle the rest of the kingdoms once the Long Night has ended.

It sounds so simple. When the Long Night has ended. But for the first time it feels simple, feels possible in a way it didn't before. Jon has four dragons, and he and Tasha both possess powers straight out of the Age of Heroes.

"The dragons are the key," Jon agrees with Lord Tyrion as they make plans to find the Night King so that Jon may slay him. (And only Jon may, he has been sure to emphasize, stating that anyone else who tries will meet a fate worse than death. Sansa believes him.) "But they can only go so far before I lose control of them, so we can't split them up, and they won't let anyone but me and Tasha ride them, and Tasha only if she rides behind me. I had one of the wargs among the wildings who follow me try, but without the protection offered by the blood of the dragon she went mad."

They are all silent at that, some studying the maps that have been spread out across the table, some perusing letters that Jon and Tasha have hand delivered from their family members in the Vale. Lord Tyrion is alternating between the maps and a charcoal drawing of Lady Natasha holding Ser Jaime's daughter Tyria in her arms.

"The dragon must have three heads. Rhaegar Targaryen was big on that according to the Widow's old records," Arya says to Jon, breaking the contemplative silence. She is idly cleaning her nails with a dagger. Sansa knows better than to believe the innocent picture. Arya could put a knight's eye out through the slit in his helmet at twenty paces with that blade. "And Bran's been wittering on about it in my dreams, so I reckon it's important now that I know you dream about him too." Arya tosses the dagger, catches it, and then between one moment and the next it seems to vanish from her hand. "You're the only one with blood of the dragon, so the blood of the wolf will have to do. I'm your cousin and a warg. Might make a difference."

"Arya," Jon starts to protest.

"Shut it, lest you want to wait around until you've got two kids old enough to ride," Arya commands before he can get any more words out. No one else is foolish enough to gainsay her, though Sansa would like to. Out of concern for her sister, if nothing else. (Jon said the last warg went mad. The Tully madness that waits for Sansa sleeps within Arya too.) But there is a reason that the agents of the Widow's Web refer to Arya as the Bitch of the North, a name that Sansa's sister is inordinately proud of.

By the next evening Arya is the white dragon Lyanna's rider, and if she is more aggressive than before, slinking from room to room with predatory grace and demanding that all her meat be served charred, aggressive is not the same thing as mad. It is a small price to pay, to have a second dragon rider on their side.

But, Sansa can't help but despair, the dragon must have three heads.

-l-

No one suggests that Sansa try to tame one of the dragons. If it even occurs to anyone to have her try, they do not let on. Sansa is not offended. It's not as if she's a warg like Arya.

(Pup, hello pup. Play, play, soft pup, she imagines Lady saying, seeing her son in her mind's eye.)

War councils are had. Plans are made. Weapons are forged and sorted and sharpened. Sansa attends her duties, caring for her son and running the household, closeting herself with Aunt Genna to inventory their remaining foodstuffs and try to cobble together rations for an army. (The dragon must have three heads.) The dragons have brought in a good amount of meat at Jon and Arya's direction, which is a boon to be sure.

And every night after Arya takes a dragon for herself, Sansa dreams that she is Lady, and Lady is sitting before the big red and black dragon, the one named for Jon's Targaryen aunt, and the enormous creature is looking back, her scaly lips parted to reveal the wet darkness within her gullet.

The dragon tilts its head and for the first time since they began, Sansa's dream shifts. She watches as a silver haired woman - little more than a girl really - weeps over the insensate body of her once mighty husband. Feels her sorrow as she places the misshapen body of her stillborn babe on a pyre. But before the flames can catch the child's hair turns red and his eyes Tully blue, and then further still until they burn like a wight's.

Only death can pay for life, comes a woman's voice. You must choose who.

Not Tybolt, Sansa thinks, jerking awake.

Still in her night dress, her thick Lannister red robe her only concession to propriety, Sansa reassures Gerion that she is only going to check on Tybolt and slips out of the bedchamber, a candlestick in her hand to light the way. And she does go to the nursery, to stroke her son's soft red hair and kiss his chubby cheeks. Lady is by the cradle, dutifully on guard. Sansa praises the direwolf and lays a hand on her head. Some part of her was expecting Lady to be among the dragons as she was in Sansa's dream.

Seeing Tybolt is fine, Sansa leaves the nursery. But she does not return to bed. Instead she ghosts down the many staircases that lead to the bowels of the Rock, making her way to the caverns that have been given over as a lair for the dragons. A sort of makeshift paddock to keep them out of the snow.

She almost loses her nerve when she reaches the naturally formed tunnel deep within the mountain and finds the fearsome Daenerys laying across the entrance to the cavern. But she reminds herself that she is doing this for Tybolt, that she owes it to him to at least try even if she doesn't think it will work, to given him every chance possible to grow up outside the Long Night.

(Catelyn kidnapped Kevin Lannister on an empty suspicion in her zeal to secure justice for her son. That zeal is Sansa's too, and she can't do any less.)

Dany inclines her head and backs out of the way.

Taking a deep breath, Sansa tries to still the pounding of her heart and enters the lair. Behind her, Dany moves to block the passageway once again, cutting off Sansa's escape route should her courage fail her. She swallows back bile even as her knees turn to water, making her wobble and nearly fall.

The dragons are amazing and magical and terrifying, especially when Jon is not present to control them. Lyanna is lounging in a pool of water, the natural heat of her body turning it into a hot spring, steam glistening on her white scales, lending them a rainbow sheen. Starkfire is sleeping on a high shelf of rock out of Sansa's reach, and is too small for a rider yet in any case, being a little smaller than a direwolf.

It is to the green and gold Tasherys that Sansa turns her gaze. The emerald dragon is cleaning her scales with her tongue, looking very like a scaly cat. A very large, scaly cat. Just like her namesake, Sansa thinks, a shrill giggle falling from her lips. She immediately claps her hands over her mouth and freezes, afraid the dragons may… well she isn't quite sure.

They ignore her. Still, she stays completely still out of a combination of caution and terror until her muscles are stiff and she's starting to tremble.

Taking a deep breath, Sansa resumes her approach to her chosen dragon, one shuffling step at a time. Tasherys ceases her grooming and huffs in Sansa's direction, making her freeze again.

She should have told someone she was coming down here. Should have brought Arya or Jon with her, to make sure nothing goes wrong if she fails. (When she fails. She isn't a warg. Why did she think this was a good idea?)

But she couldn't face the questions and fuss that was sure to result from her saying she wanted to try. She couldn't face the humiliation when (if) she fails. And their people can't afford the loss of morale that would result from everyone being privy to her attempt. To think they might have a third rider, only to learn that Lady Sansa isn't made of the same stern stuff as her sister. At least this way her shame will be something known only to her and the dragons.

If she survives.

Tasherys wuffles again, curls of smoke coming from her nostrils, and then must decide that she either finds Sansa's presence acceptable or doesn't care one way or the other, because she returns to her grooming.

Sansa draws closer, the light from her candle bouncing along the walls thanks to her shaking hands. Sweat streams down her face, neck, and back and pools between her breasts, though the cavern is not really that much warmer than the rest of the properly heated rooms of the Rock.

At last, after what seems like several hours but could have been seconds for all Sansa knows, Sansa inches close enough to lay her head on Tasherys' neck.

The dragon snaps her head to the side, one large eye fixed on Sansa's face.

Sansa stares into that eye.

(The last warg who tried went mad.)

And she falls.

(There is madness in Sansa's blood. She will use it to set the world aflame.)

-l-

When the household rouses and Jon and Arya come to take Dany and Lyanna on their daily flight, Sansa joins them, perched confidently on Tasherys' back, still in her nightdress.

When they land in the courtyard a frantic Gerion comes running towards her, running his hands lewdly over her body, too concerned with checking her for injuries to care for who is watching. Sansa doesn't mind, basking in the attention and smirking at her mate.

"Looks like the dragon will have its third head after all," Jon comments, the tense lines around his eyes going slack for once as he gives her a small, sincere smile.

Once he has ascertained her health to his satisfaction, Gerion places a single kiss on Sansa's brow. Then he punches Jon in the face.

Sansa grins toothily.