Sansa

She did not fear death. But that did not mean that she looked forward to it. Especially fire, though she figured dragons were a bit preferable to being chewed up by the reanimated bones of her ancestors, physically at least. But from the standpoint of her pride, it was far worse. There was no pride lost in losing and dying to the dead, no embarrassment, no thought that the enemy who defeated you would take any personal pride in defeating you, no need to stare into the triumphant gleam in their eyes your last moments alive.

"You do not repent or beg forgiveness for your treasons?"

The Dragon Queen. The woman who saved the North. The woman who destroyed King's Landing. The woman who killed her brother, whose dragon killed her sister. She would have sworn vengeance, except what choice did she have? Daenery I Targaryen held at dragon point the armies of the North and Vale, with even men like Wyman Manderly and Yohn Royce petrified by fear of the fire, casting guilty looks upon her as they stood silent at her sentencing.

"By all the gods, I will repeat," Sansa yelled across the Dragonpit, hoping that her last words would carry beyond what remained in her own life, "Daenerys Targaryen murdered the rightful heir of the Seven Kingdoms..."

"After he tried to murder me..."

"...she is a kingslayer and a kinslayer," she continued, ignoring her interruption. A dead woman already, she had no reason to fear any further the woman before her. "Though I refuse to bend the knee, I pray the North does not follow in my example, if only so that she does not reduce all our cities and castles to rubble."

One look at Wyman Manderly, whose downcast eyes revealed the truth, that they'd rather live and kneel than see all their lives, legacies, families reduced to ash.

"Is that all?" Daenerys asked her, a violent gleam in her eye. "Is this what you wanted, a martyr's death, so as to preserve your own pride?"

"If you want to save the North," she recalled Bran saying in Winterfell, after they heard the news, "go south, surrender to the Dragon Queen, and accept her judgment."

How difficult it had been to tear herself from her home one last time, but she knew full well that doing nothing would see it torn from her. And though she was a survivor, what point was there in surviving in a world made of ash, what joy was there in life to find that all her suffering and her ordeals had been for naught, to live in a world where she was the only surviving Stark, beside her brother who was no longer her brother, or even human?

She swore she'd never leave Winterfell again. She swore she'd never return to King's Landing. But what use were sworn words in this world of dead men and dragons?

"Daenerys Targaryen, long may you reign," she uttered with a bitter smile, "so long as your dragon lives, of course. I'd imagine there be a bounty on that beast higher than any upon any man or woman before. Long may you reign, knowing that men and women, lords and ladies, smallfolk and children alike will devote their lives to seeing you and your dragon dead, on both sides of the Narrow Sea."

Bran, even though he wasn't fully Bran, she trusted not to send her to her death for no reason. Perhaps by dying before all the northern lords she'd inspire them to rebel, to take back the North just as she and Jon did, for a brief time. And if her own miserable life be the price, then she found herself all too willing to give it, now that she had nothing left to live for.

"Enough," the Dragon Queen ordered, her voice surprisingly soft. As she turned to her dragon, Sansa closed her eyes, and wondered what was to come. Jon said there had been nothing afterwards, and that did not surprise her, because the gods were nothing. But she allowed herself to hope, in that there were those who awaited her after.

Arya. Jon. Mother. Father. Robb. Rickon. Theon. Lady. She repeated those words in her mind as the fire engulfed her.

She woke screaming. And standing. In a bright room. She collapsed immediately onto the ground. Calming her arms, still batting away the intense, dreadful pain of the flames, she saw her sleeves...frilly, light, pink...wholly unlike the dark wolfskin coats she'd worn to her own execution.

"Dear girl, you fainted." A most unwelcome voice, that of Littlefinger's, and she knew this must be hell. As the man who betrayed her family rushed down to her, helping her up, she avoided his eyes, meeting instead those of a curiously detached Cersei Lannister, who watched the two of them with mild amusement. She'd not seen this enemy of hers since her escape during Joffrey's wedding, but heard that they'd cut her hair short for her walk of atonement, that she'd kept it short through her short stint upon the Iron Throne. She wore it long now, this dead woman, with a face younger than she'd remembered.

Behind her stood a pudgy bald man, and she remembered. This was when they coerced her to write that letter to Robb, after they'd taken her father. Was this hell, to relive her worst, most shameful moments? Yet...she wasn't reliving them, was she? Not in the way she'd imagine, as she'd never fainted upon leaving the room, Baelish never rushing to her side in mock sympathy to lift her up before the gleeful queen, delighted to see further evidence of the embarrassment and destruction of the Starks.

"A terrible ordeal, to be sure," Varys said to Cersei, "the young ought not suffer so for the crimes of their elders." He bowed deferentially to the queen he still pretended to serve. "We ought to get her some essence of nightshade, to help her sleep. She is still to be married to your son the King, and it would do him well to have a Queen of sound mind beside him."

"Pycelle, get to it then," the queen said curtly, apparently bored already by her victim's torment, as Sansa avoided the lecherous eyes of the old maester.

Father's still alive, she thought. If I'm here, and Robb doesn't know yet...they haven't killed him...he's in the same castle as me! In the dungeons! I must see him!

She would never trust them again. Littlefinger. Cersei. Pycelle, not that she'd ever trusted him. Varys. Except Varys had betrayed the Dragon Queen, hadn't he, just as he betrayed the Lannisters. For the good of the realm, Tyrion had said of the first betrayal. Of the second, they told her it was because he was about to champion Jon's claim to the throne. She had to get his attention, now, before the others, in a way the others wouldn't know.

"Viserys Targaryen is dead," she said, looking straight into his eyes. She wasn't sure whether this was true or not in the strictest sense, but even if the man lived now, he'd die around the same time as her own father. The surprise she caught in the Spider's eyes indicated that this was news to him. Or even if it wasn't, it was something a spoiled little girl like she ought never know. "Daenerys Targaryen will have three dragons soon, within the span of five or six moons. She'll lose the Dothraki once her husband dies, but she'll regain them again, she'll unite all the khalasars, once she burns all their khals...though that will be many years from today."

"The poor girl's delirious," Baelish said next to her, Sansa not unaware of the way he moved his fingers against her skin, her body still that of a child's, as he held her upright. "Perhaps Grandmaester Pycelle can give her something stronger..."

"Yes yes, I'll have him empty his coffers," Cersei said, impatient with her hostage now.

If you know yourself years from now, you wouldn't overlook the Targaryen threat. But you're not worried about them yet, are you? You don't even know what a khalasar is.

You have no idea how terrible those dragons will be. Far more terrible than you.

Pyrcelle raised his eyebrows, and she'd imagine Littlefinger ought to be more suspicious than he let on now, but all of this could be explained from things she could have gleaned from her father the Hand, combined with the delirium. But to the person in the room who could help her, her words had their intended effect, the Spider's eyes not leaving hers as Littlefinger walked her out of Cersei's chambers.

He came to her, as she'd expected. Harmless girl she was, they would never allow a traitor's daughter freedom to roam the Red Keep and seek out the best spymaster on either side of the Narrow Sea. So she had to induce him to seek her out instead.

"Lady Sansa," he said, approaching her delicately in her gilded cage, and she saw that he still seemed lost for words.

"You betrayed Robert Baratheon. I understand, because he's a drunk and a beast sometimes. You'll betray the Lannisters, why wouldn't you, they're the worst. But why the Targaryens? Don't you know them, their blood, their history? Haven't you heard enough of Viserys to know that he won't be any better of a king than Jaime Lannister's bastard son?"

"Whatever your father told you," Varys said cautiously, and she could see that even he could not hide his fear in front of the dumb traitor's daughter who knew too much.

"My father told me nothing," Sansa smiled innocently. "He never told me of your relationship with Illyrio Mopatis of Pentos, because he never knew it himself. He also never told me your contact with Ser Jorah Mormont...that's how you keep abreast of events across the Narrow Sea, isn't it? I'd assume you're already aware of Visery's death? Have you already pardoned Ser Jorah? Did you know that he will betray you for the Drag...Daenerys, he's probably in love with the girl already? That he'll foil whatever attempts you make to kill her...except that's your intent, isn't it? Because you never wanted either one of them dead, not when you planned to crown them and seat one of them back upon that wretched chair."

"How do you know all this," Varys asked, abandoning all pretense, and in his fearful eyes, Sansa knew she must tread warily, because whatever Varys was, she did not think him above killing a traitor's daughter to preserve his own head.

"She's not what you think she is," Sansa said, changing her voice to be sweeter, more sympathetic towards the man, as if she could understand his obvious mistakes in logic. "Her heart can be sweet, but her heart is cold, how can it not be, after all you've done to her, on behalf of King Robert? She is a Targaryen still, and I assure you...the blood of the Dragon flows stronger in her than any before her."

Shutting her mouth, she looked away, gesturing to him she was done speaking. Information was his weapon, his currency, she knew, and she was not about to give away any more to him, so as to freely and foolishly transfer this power to him from her own hands.

"What do you want?"

"For you to save my father."

"Your father will keep his life," Varys said wearily, relief in his voice that he could at least grant her this simple request. Or so he thought. "He will confess his crimes before the Sept of Baelor tomorrow. Two moons from now, he'll join his bastard son on the Wall..."

If only you knew now about that so-called bastard.

"It won't happen," she interrupted, terrified ever since she found herself in this world, whether it be real or a dream, of having to relive that moment again. "He'll confess, the crowd will roar for his blood, and Joffrey will take his head anyway. My brother will go to war. Robert's brothers will go to war. Flea bottom will starve, King's Landing will..." She stopped herself again, resisting the urge to spill all her secrets to this stranger before she'd received anything in return. "Let him loose. Take him through the tunnels. Arrange for a ship to carry him..."

"I couldn't, even if I wanted to..."

"You could, if you wanted to," she said, remembering what he'd done for Tyrion, who had burned too, not long before her, simply for the crime of loving his own brother. But he wouldn't know this now, would he? "Save my father, or I'll tell the Lannisters of your betrayal immediately."

His eyes cold, she knew she'd overstepped her bounds. "You'll not leave this room alive, much less speak to the King or his mother. And who would they believe, a most valued member of the Small Council in good standing, or a traitor's daughter, spewing all sorts of madness she'd heard from her traitor father? Dragons? They've been dead hundreds of years..."

His tone indicated that he'd little believed her himself, except there was doubt in his mind, that she could know the impossible. But he was right, she'd do well to remember that she was still a traitor's daughter, and not the grown Lady of Winterfell. And she ought not to alienate Varys, not when he was the only ally she could gain in King's Landing...at least until the Half Man's arrival anyway, and that was still many moons away...far past that day before Baelor's statue.

"Give me two audiences then, that's all I ask, and I swear, on the honor of my family, that I will keep your secret from the Lannisters."

"You want to see your father, I presume," Varys asked.

He trusts me. He trusts I'm my father's daughter still.

"And Cersei. Joffrey I trust will never listen to reason. She I can at least plead to control her own son. You'll be present, of course, to ensure I don't reveal your secrets."

Though she doubted that Cersei could help. As he took her down the stairs of the dungeon later that night, she told herself there was nothing she could do to help her father, so as not to see her own hopes wilt and die when it happened again. Varys was right. What power did she truly have at this moment, how was she anything but a dumb and helpless girl? The Spider controlled all the information coming and leaving King's Landing. Cersei would not believe her about the Targaryens, not with Varys refuting her. And by the time news of the dragons arrived from other sources, her father would be long dead.

What power did she have over any of these foolish southrons, caught as they were in their own game, what could she say to them now, that would prove prophetic before Ned Stark's would be execution? That the White Walkers were coming? They'd definitely lock her up in the Maidenvault for that. That Cersei was sleeping with her brother, that the children were not Robert's, that she'd used Lancel Lannister to poison him? She'd just be repeating her own father's so called treasons, making up bits and pieces of her own. That Stannis would storm the city, that Renly would be killed through witchcraft? What proof had she of these events, until they happened? Littlefinger's crimes? She'd get her revenge on him in due time, but at this very moment, his lack of scruples, compared to Varys's, gave him even less reason not to kill her when confronted by his treacheries. So she'd have to accept that, unless Cersei could somehow speak sense into her son, she'd be doomed to witness her father's death all over again.

"Stay," she ordered the Spider atop the stairs, in the voice she used when she'd ruled the North. He shrugged, seeing no harm in letting secrets pass between a dead man and his strange daughter. She'd bluffed, she'd used the only card she had, and she failed. Could her own words have further doomed her father? Certainly, the only reason Varys would have thought her knowledge possible was through Ned Stark one way or another, that he'd gained more spies than the Spider could have guessed during his short stint as Hand. But wouldn't that ensure the Spider would never let him leave the Keep alive?

"Come," she said, changing her mind, and he followed her like a dog. "Unlock it," she said, a voice used to ordering others, and he did.

The shock in her father's eyes, the sadness that she would see him like this, broke her heart as she ran onto him, caring not of the smell and the sweat, hugging him with her small arms until she feared that she could choke the life out of him herself.

"Sansa...what are you doing...," he managed to ask, after she'd let go of him. "You shouldn't be down here."

Rather than answer him, she turned to Varys. "Father, I'm going to ask the Spider to leave now. For his peace of mind, I ask that whatever we speak of here, whether it be his loyalty to House Targaryen, his association with Illyrio Mopatis of Pentos, his attempts to foil the assassinations of Daenerys Targaryen through the use of Ser Jorah Mormont...whatever else we speak of in the privacy of the cells, that you swear, on your name as a Stark, by all our ancestors, that you will speak not of it to anyone else. Not even Cersei Lannister...not even Stannis Baratheon."

She hoped the shock on her own father's face would save him from Varys's plotting at least, and keep the Spider satisfied that Ned Stark was not one he ought to fear, that he would keep his mouth shut upon the Wall, were she lucky enough that Joffrey did spare him; her father's honor, she hoped it may actually help him for once.

"Do it, father."

The sheer intensity of his daughter's words, a passion and maturity beyond what he'd ever witnessed before, led him to agree.

"I swear it, upon my honor."

Varys nodded silently.

"Leave," Sansa ordered again, before either of them could get another word out, and she hugged her father again as she listened to the Spider's feet clambering back up the stairs.

"I don't think I can save you, father," she admitted, once Varys was out of earshot.

He seemed lost for words, incredulous, because she was a little girl, and little girls weren't supposed to save their own fathers. "Sansa...I..."

"Arya escaped," she said, wondering if or how she should tell him what she knew. "She'll go through a lot...she'll survive the Lannisters, the Cleganes, the Faceless Men...she'll destroy the White Walkers and death itself...but she won't survive when the Targaryens burn what's left of our family."

Now he was really confused, and Sansa wondered whether he thought the same as she in the beginning, whether this was just a fevered dream...nightmare rather.

"The Targaryen girl...Robert was right about her. Though she does come North, she does help against the Others...but then she'll burn King's Landing to the ground, because she's a Targaryen, one who's been tortured and tormented all her life."

Just like me.

"Sansa...who...how do you know this?"

She knew what he was about to ask? Who are you? What have you done to my daugther?

"I'm still your daughter. I died too...as the Lady of Winterfell, when I refused to bend the knee and surrender the North to her."

"When? How?"

"Seven years from now." The pride in his eyes indicated that he believed her, impossible as her words sounded...and weak as his mind was from rotting in the dungeons for so long. And the heartbreak in his eyes...knowing what she must have gone through, knowing that his own daughter died anyway, then somehow survived that ordeal. But she wanted him proud of her, she wanted to suck down that feeling, that look in his eyes, down her throat like wine, so she continued. "I survived many things before then. Arya and I both avenged our families from those who betrayed us. She slaughtered every man living who bore the Frey name..."

"The Freys?"

She nodded, though she didn't want to burden her father with any more of that terrible knowledge. "The Boltons...I fed the son to his own hounds. I watched as they chewed through his skin and bones. That was after we took back Winterfell. Myself and Jon...the trueborn son of Rhaegar and aunt Lyanna."

If he'd any reason to doubt her before, he certainly doubted no longer.

"What about..."

"The others," she finished his question sadly, asking about those in her family whose fates she'd yet to reveal. She shook her head. "It was bad. It was very, very, very bad."

Bran survives yet, she thought. Can he see me now, in the past? Did he know this would happen?

"I died? I couldn't do anything to stop this...before you died?"

"Tomorrow," she nodded, tears streaming freely down her eyes at the memory.

"Sansa," he said, clutching her closely this time, "I'm so sorry. Everything...I couldn't protect you. I never should have come south."

"It's not your fault," she said. Before, she would blame herself, except now that she was back in the Keep, in the thick of it, she truly understood how little power she held in the middle of everything. For now. But for now, all the knowledge in the world may not save her father.

"You're too good for this world. We all are, we're all children of summer...even you...even men like Tywin Lannister and Stannis Baratheon and Roose Bolton...none of them know, none of them have seen the dead, or the true power of the dragons. Even if we'd all stayed in Winterfell, our doom was coming anyway...a doom of fire and ice, to destroy this realm one way or another."

Ned Stark laughed. "My own daughter, calling me a summer child."

They stayed like that for a few precious minutes, Sansa curled up in her father's arms, the so perfect sensation of his fingers through her hair helping her feel, for this idyllic moment too brief, like the child she once was.

"I don't know if I can save you," she said again. "I'll try...but...I'll save Robb, and mother, and Jon, and Arya, Rickon...the North. Everyone."

"It shouldn't be your burden," her father said, holding her closer. He'd probably wanted to add dear child, except he understood she was no child, and hadn't been for some time.

"It is," she realized, her eyes clear through her drying tears, even as she heard the approach of the Spider, signifying the end of their time together. "That's the only reason why I'm here."