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She comes as if from nowhere, materializing through the snowy wind like some sort of phantom back from the dead. There’s no word to warn of her arrival, no men at her side. Only an armor-clad woman the size of a man, hovering behind Sansa like the Warrior with one hand on the hilt of a sword large enough to bring down cities.
Robb hadn't believed the maidservant who came to the solar to tell him of Sansa's arrival. Even hearing her name had felt strange and foreign. He'd spent forever searching for her along with the others, hoping to hear of her survival, yet his first instinct at her name had been denial, to say that no such girl existed anymore, that she couldn't possibly be here in Winterfell. But here she is, looking for one uncanny moment like his Lady Mother come home at last until he shakes his head to dispel it. This is Sansa, tall and grown, standing straight and rigid in the courtyard with eyes that almost look through him, hair in a southron style and a dress too beautiful and impractical for life in the north, worse for the wear though it is.
He wants to embrace her, take her in his arms and never let go. Something in her posture discourages it, though, a steeliness that’s so distinctly unlike his sister that it throws him, driving the air from his lungs like he’s been unseated from his horse.
"Sansa," he says, still disbelieving. He’s imagined this moment for so long, but now that it’s upon him, he can barely take it in.
"Lord Stark," she manages before her voice closes up and he does embrace her then, not caring that she stays stiff in his arms, that it takes a long moment for her hands to come hesitantly around his back. That her eyes seem dark and far away even when he releases her.
At first she only sleeps, so deep and so long that it frightens Robb, makes him wonder if she'll ever wake again. For days he hasn't seen her. He could almost believe she hadn't come back at all; perhaps he'd only imagined her there in the courtyard, created the feel of her in his arms out of whole cloth. His unease bleeds into Grey Wind, the wolf acting snappish and agitated before Robb finally sends him to guard her the way Robb wishes he himself could, Grey Wind lying first at her door, and then at the foot of her bed, until Robb sees as little of him as he does Sansa.
"She still sleeps, my lord," the maids he’s had assigned to her tell him time and again. He asks so often over the days that they begin to look sad at his approach, begin to avert their eyes and hurry on with their duties afterwards.
"Tell me immediately if she wakes," he says each time. He wants to charge into her chambers and shake her awake. He wants to crawl into bed with her and sleep forever at her side. Feeling powerless should be nothing new to Robb – he’d given up the North’s war, bent the knee to Stannis Baratheon, taken the remnants of his army home to Winterfell with his tail between his legs to lick his wounds, he'd watched his mother die and could do nothing to stop it – yet still this is bitter medicine to swallow. He tells himself she’s fine, that she just needs time, but worries niggle at him, following him and nipping at his heels, harrying him like a pack of hounds. What she’s gone through, he doesn’t know, but he worries that it’s sent her out of her mind. For her to be so close, after so long, but still so far away… It’s enough to carry him to the brink of madness himself, if only to be closer to her, the only sister he knows he has left.
The day she wakes, five separate members of the household come to tell him, making him slightly embarrassed now at how transparent he’d been while she slept. She’s weak and disoriented, they tell him, and taking her food in her chambers, but she’s awake. Robb’s never taken the stairs so quickly. Her bedchamber is crowded, handfuls of people milling about, examining her, bringing food and clearing trays. He finds her in her bed, smiles at her over the maids and maesters surrounding her, thinking that his face must look almost frightening with the strength of his hope and fear mingled in unhappy company. Her answering smile is shallow, rote. It unsettles him, almost more than her endless sleeping had. There’s no getting to her through the bustle around her, so he reluctantly leaves her to their care. He plans to spend the afternoon going over ledgers and accounts, but every time he tries to concentrate, he finds himself staring off into space, turning her over and over in his mind, her pale skin, her wan appearance. The disturbing blankness of her face. Knowing he’ll get nothing done, he closes the ledgers and makes his way to her room. She’s sleeping again when he gets there, only a single maid left, sitting at her bedside. Robb dismisses her with a gesture. Sansa’s hand is cool and thin when he takes it in his own. He holds it between his hands, almost willing his warmth into her, and he sits and listens to the reassuring sound of her breathing, counting the beats between each inhalation, measuring them against the beat of his own heart.
It’s another day before she leaves her bed. Robb would have thought the years he spent apart from her – not knowing of her fate, searching for her and all the others – would have kept him from impatience now, but he fairly bristles with it, only forcing himself to allow her time by strength of will. When one of her maids tells him Sansa’s up at last, that she’s being bathed and dressed, he lasts only a quarter of an hour before he’s climbing the steps to her chambers.
He stops himself at her solar, takes a deep breath and reminds himself that she’s home, that they can fix anything else, when he realizes that the voices inside her bedchamber are anxious, agitated. It's Grey Wind's deep, menacing growl that brings Robb bolting inside, pushing his way through the people crowded together beyond the door to her room. He hasn't heard Grey Wind make such a sound in so long, but still he responds to it instantly, his every nerve standing on end, alert and ready for danger. He finds Sansa backed into a corner, hair lying damp on her shoulders to darken her gown, one hand fluttering at her waist like a bird. Grey Wind is braced protectively against her legs with his teeth bared in a snarl. The new household staff has had to grow accustomed to him, but still they're wary and they're backing away now, clustering together instinctively.
"What's going on?” Robb demands.
"Begging your pardon, my lord," one of the girls says, keeping her eyes on Grey Wind even as she bobs a curtsey. "We only tried to dress her hair." He turns to Sansa, seeing the bleakness of her expression with a sinking feeling.
"Sansa?” he asks, making his voice as gentle as he knows how. “What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she says hastily, her eyes dropping defensively in a way that makes sadness well in his chest. "I'd rather they didn't. Didn't touch my..." Her voice trails off and one hand clutches convulsively in the length of her hair, the other digging into the coarse fur at Grey Wind's ruff. Robb wonders what could have happened to prompt such a violent reaction. It makes anger burn in his belly, makes his hands ball in to fists and itch for someone to strike.
"Leave us," he tells her maids. Sansa flinches at the authority ringing in his voice and he could kick himself. The line of her body stays tense and hunched, even after everyone else moves through her solar and closes the outer door. Robb knows nothing he could say would put her at ease, so he walks through into the solar and sits in one of the chairs set at an angle before the hearth, calling Grey Wind to him. Much to his surprise, Grey Wind doesn’t appear immediately. Instead he pads into the room at Sansa’s side when she hesitantly emerges from her bedchamber, looking up at her in appeal before slinking to sit at Robb’s feet. Curiously, Robb allows himself to slip into the wolf’s skin for a moment, and finds his consciousness jumbled and complicated, tangled with Robb’s own, full of anxiety and fear and hope and a fierce, protective loyalty. Robb resolves to control himself better. If he’s not careful, Grey Wind will be taking off someone’s hand just for touching Sansa before long.
For several long moments, they all three stay as they are – Robb in his chair, Grey Wind at his feet, Sansa hovering hesitantly just over the threshold from her bedchamber, her body clearly poised to flee. Robb forces himself to sit still, to do nothing. It’s harder than he would have expected. Harder than anything he’s done in quite a long time.
When she finally comes to sit, she sinks to the stone floor rather than taking a chair. Grey Wind is within easy reach of her hand. Robb recognizes it, the behavior of someone attuned to defense, someone waiting for attack. Again it makes anger burn within him, so fiercely that he feels ill. Instantly, a reactive ripple of tension runs up Grey Wind’s spine under his hand, the fur there bristling upright. Robb inhales through his nose, tries to force his unruly emotions into order. He watches Sansa from the corner of his eye as she stares into the fire, so intently that he wonders what she's seeing. Her hair is unbound and wild about her, tangled from her bath, and she twines it compulsively about her fingers. He wants to reach out and still her hands, to stop her endless, useless fretting. It's driving him mad that he can't help her, can't reach her when she's all he has. The Sansa he knows is somewhere within her, he’s sure of it – he has to believe she is. He just has to find her.
"Sansa," he says, and is heartened when she doesn't flinch at his voice, when she looks at him as if she sees him. Encouraged, he leans forward in his chair to brace his elbows on his knees, one hand outstretched to just barely touch his fingertips to her hair. She doesn't move away. "I could... Would you like me to braid it for you? I did that, sometimes, when we were young. Do you remember?"
She looks at him, searches his face as if seeking some sort of answer or secret. It wasn't anything he did for her often, only every once in a while, when she'd quarreled with Arya and spent the afternoon crying, once when Theon had pushed her down in the mud and ruined her favorite dress. Slowly, she nods, then turns her face to the fire and sits, quietly expectant.
The floor is warm when he settles behind her on his knees, leaning back against his heels. Still she shivers, the cold of Winterfell no longer living in her marrow, and Robb thinks to have more wood stored by, plenty enough for a roaring fire whenever she likes. Careful to keep an easy distance between them, to give her room to run so she won't feel she needs to, he reaches out and drags one hand down the length of her hair before tentatively lifting a fistful of it. It’s soft in his grip despite the tangles and snarls. Gently, as if coaxing a delicate chain free of a knot, he unravels it, combs through it with his fingers until it lies smooth and rippling down her back, then picks up the next section.
Awkwardly, haltingly, he begins to speak, telling her of their family. Bran and Rickon are still somewhere in the North. Robb’s sent men in every direction to find them, sent out every raven again and again, but they’re well-hidden. Well-hidden or dead, but Robb refuses to even entertain the latter notion, let alone mention it to Sansa. Arya is somewhere beyond the sea. She’d sent a raven, just once, her message cryptic but enough to prove that she lived. At first Robb is hesitant to say anything of Jon, but to his surprise, Sansa asks, and seems glad of it when he tells her Jon is well, that he’ll come to visit when he can. The idea of all of them together in Winterfell again fills him with a bittersweet longing so acute that he gives in to the weakness that’s seizing him, surrenders to the hopes and fears he’s carried since Sansa returned, and rests his cheek on her hair with the barest pressure.
“They’ll come back,” he whispers into her hair, closing his eyes and breathing in the sweet lavender scent of it. “They’ll come back and we’ll be a family again.” He thinks he says it more for himself than for her, but she nods, her hair sliding against his lips. He gives in to impulse and presses a kiss behind her ear, unspeakably glad when she doesn’t shy away. “We’ll be whole again someday.” Whole or close to it, and Sansa is the start of it.
He runs out of words. A steady, comfortable silence settles over them and he switches his focus to dressing her hair, corralling the length of it in both hands. The long tails running down her shoulders that he'd plaited when they were younger would be too crude and childish on her now. He thinks back to how their mother wore her hair, pulled from the sides with three braids somehow merging into one. The style he produces is not entirely like their mother’s, but it serves well enough. When it's done, he fixes it with strip of leather he breaks from the laces of own his jerkin, feeling a queer sense of satisfaction at having managed the whole affair. He runs a light hand over the length of it, bumpy and rounded like the cobbles in the yard worn smooth at the edges by snow and rain and the tread of feet. He touches it so lightly he'd think she couldn't feel it, but she seems to feel it anyway, leaning the tiniest bit into his hand. He wonders if this simple northern style feels strange to her, after she's spent so much time in the south. Life must feel strange to her now. It’s unsettling to think that perhaps coming to Winterfell didn’t feel as much like coming home to her as it did to him.
She's still wearing the braids the next morning when he sees her in the yard, blinking against the sun like she's never seen it before. She sees him looking at her and gives him the barest hint of a smile. He smiles back, raises an awkward hand in a stunted wave. Then she drops her eyes and her head, hurries out of the yard with Grey Wind trotting at her side. She wears those braids all day, crooked and sloppy, even though she could have re-done them herself, and it makes Robb feel something he doesn't understand.
When he comes to her solar that evening, she’s already there, sitting before the fire. It’s silly to think she’s waiting expressly for him. For a moment Robb just watches her, looks at the firelight glinting gold in the red of her hair. Tully red. One of the things he and Sansa have always shared. She turns, then, sees him in the doorway. Looks at him intently with her Tully blue eyes, so like his own. So like their mother’s. Maybe it wasn’t so silly to think she was waiting for him after all.
Wordlessly, he sits behind her, his crossed shins touching her hips just enough to give her room to move away if she chooses. Long strands have pulled from the previous night’s plaits, his work looks inexpert sitting this close, but still she seems lovely, elegant. But then, Robb thinks, Sansa could look elegant covered in dirt and straw and dressed in a burlap sack. She’s always been a lady, even as a little girl, when she would raise the hem of her skirts to keep them clean of mud while they played in the yard, when she would charm visiting Lords and bannermen with her attentive sweetness. He pulls the braids from her hair, combs through it carefully and plaits it again, a little better this time. When he’s done, he runs his hand down the braid as he’d done the night before, and unfolds his legs, angles them to the side to stretch out next to her. He loses track of how long they sit there together, not speaking, not moving. After a while she leans back, her spine just barely touching the arm he has braced against the stone floor. The contact is so slight that it would be easy not to notice. But Robb does notice, and some small piece of his heart begins to knit itself back together.
She’s there every night after that. He takes her braids out, or puts them in, or just brushes her hair until it’s shining, until he loses count of the strokes. Sometimes they merely sit, the crackle of the fire and the steady work of Grey Wind’s breathing the only sounds in the room. It feels so familiar that he expects to look up and see her with a hoop, picking out delicate flowers on her linen with floss; it’s a surprise to find her gazing quietly into the fire instead. He realizes with a pang that they barely know each other now. That they have to re-learn each other, introduce themselves like strangers, something made harder when she seems to not even know who she’s become. Robb understands all too well how life can change you. But he misses the Sansa he knew.
He finds himself bringing her things to remind her of life before, to help her remember who she is: ribbons like those she once used to dress Lady’s leash. A golden ring in the shape of the moths that always came at dusk during the summer, the ones they all used to chase and try to catch, laughing and shouting with one another in the meadow until they were called in. The cooks grumble about using some of their precious few lemons on a handful of cakes when Westeros is in the dead of winter with no spring in sight, but Robb is Lord of Winterfell and he's not above using that to his advantage at times. When he brings the lemoncakes to Sansa she only blinks at them at first, and then at Robb, looking lost even hidden as she is by her usual impassive mask.
"I thought I remembered you liking these," he says, feeling suddenly foolish. So many things he remembers about her are long gone, fancies suited to a child rather than a woman grown. Somehow he’d expected her life to stop and hold still, hold itself like a breath, so that he’d find her the same girl she was when she left Winterfell for King’s Landing, before the world forced them all to grow up too soon. Sometimes when she stands beside him, he's shocked to realize her eyes are almost level with his, that she's so much taller than the shoulder-height sylph his memory expects to see. The cooks will loathe him, he thinks, having wasted their lemons for nothing, but then Sansa reaches out, carefully takes one of the cakes from his hand and sinks her teeth into it, a light kindling in her eyes that makes Robb feel almost dizzy with relief. He grins at her. He'll have the cooks make more; they'll find more lemons somehow.
That night, the quiet feels different, almost oppressive. She must think so as well. He's already begun to unravel her plaits, still in from the night before, when she clears her throat, coughs a little as if her voice is suffering from disuse, and says, "It's so quiet." She speaks so seldom, and always in response; her words breaking the quiet make Robb’s heart pause before resuming at a quicker pace. He has half a notion he could startle her if he isn’t careful, spook her into flight like a doe in the wood.
“I could tell you stories," Robb suggests. "Those tales you always liked. Ragnald the Brave, The Lord and the Lady.” Even as he says it, he's shaking his head at himself. He has to stop remembering her as a little girl.
“No,” she says, as if agreeing with his unspoken thoughts. “No more of those. Real stories. Tell me real stories.”
So he tells her of the beach he went to once, at the Neck, with fine white sand that clung to his bare feet like sugar when he crept away from camp with Grey Wind to see what the waves felt like. He tells her of hearing a woman sing who had the most beautiful voice, “it would have made you cry, Sansa, it really would.” He tells her of the despair he felt sending his men to their deaths. How it was a thousand times worse to watch their mother die, trying to reach her and never getting there, only Grey Wind saving him from joining her in her fate. How it felt like being stabbed in the heart. He waits for her to tell him of watching their father beheaded, he dreads it, but she stays silent and only looks at him – really looks at him, for the first time since she came home – and ghosts delicate fingers over the creases of his brow. Then it's she who comforts, she who strokes his hair as he lays his head in her lap like a child and feels hot tears leak from his eyes despite his best efforts to staunch them.
It’s as if some barrier has been broken between them afterwards. She’s not the same Sansa he knew, but she’s Sansa and that’s what matters. She begins to accompany him outside the keep. They take long walks in the Wolfswood some afternoons, the cold air bringing color to her cheeks, her smile warming Robb’s bones as they watch Grey Wind frolic and pounce and roll in the snow like a puppy. One day she comes in to his solar to watch him at work. She asks him about the running of Winterfell, so he tells her of his plans to finish rebuilding, of the stores he’s had put by, of all the tiny details of his day, and she doesn’t seem bored once. Coming on the heels of war and battle, being Lord of Winterfell had never seemed like the right life for Robb, but through Sansa’s eyes he begins to see it as worthwhile and even almost interesting.
Sometimes when he comes to her solar in the evening, he sits in one of the great chairs near the fire as she kneels between his feet, her shoulders crowding his knees apart. On those nights, she stays where she is even after he’s finished dressing her hair, sinking to one side, tucking her feet beside his ankle and resting her temple on the inside of his knee. He knows it’s far from proper to have her sit in such a manner, even if she is his sister, but he finds he can’t stop her. He finds he doesn’t want to. Instead he strokes her hair, smoothes it over her ears, watches the play of the firelight in the depths of the red. It had taken him a while to feel comfortable touching her so casually, but now he doesn’t think he could stop himself without effort. And she seems to feel the same; she loops an easy hand around his ankle when she sits between his knees, or she’ll touch her hand to the top of his head when she comes in to find him already sitting at the hearth, her fingers spearing through his curls and rubbing gently at his scalp. Her company has become so comfortable, so companionable, that Robb can’t imagine what it was like before she came home.
It’s with a shock that he realizes that it all seems almost like having a wife.
The first time he dreams of her, he wakes damp and ashamed. He remembers little of the dream – only the feel of her skin, the shine of her hair, the fresh scent of lavender floating around her and making his head swim – but still he can barely look at her the next day. He tells himself it was just a dream, that it meant nothing and will soon be forgotten, but the dream comes again, stronger and more vivid, and soon he's thinking of her when he's awake, dreams blurring into daydreams, until he can barely be in her presence without aching. He sees her and he remembers tasting her mouth in his dreams, looping the fall of her hair about one fist to tug, putting the flat of his tongue to the smooth expanse of her throat. He remembers running his fingertips over the arc where arse meets thigh, running his tongue under the curve of one breast. Remembers fucking her and how it felt like home.
He knows he should end this before it becomes disaster. He should call her maids, tell them to dress her hair from now on. But he hates to lose this time with her. She’s finally started talking, mostly about innocuous things – the household, Grey Wind, who seems to think he belongs to her now, how she spent her day – but sometimes she tells him how she’d spent her time before coming home, of her captivity in King’s Landing, her flight to the Vale. He knows she doesn’t tell him near everything. When she speaks of Petyr Baelish acting as her father, her voice dries up, her tale grows sparse and patched, stretched thin around the holes that she won’t fill in. She’ll not speak of Joffrey at all, her eyes assuming a flat, hard stare when Robb hesitantly mentions his name. But slowly he learns her anew, and only when she sits before him, giving him her hair, her nape, the narrow line of her back. Never beside him, never facing him. He thinks it must feel safer, to say such things to the empty air, with Robb only a presence behind her, a bedrock to cling to while looking out over the abyss of her past. He’s loathe to break this fragile thing between them by turning her away, no matter how sensible his reasons. She needs this. And he needs her. Distantly, he thinks of Jon and how much he would like this Sansa, how there’s a new kindness to her, a deep well of compassion she hadn’t possessed before. Jon would like how clever she’s become, how quick-witted and sharp. And Robb thinks maybe Sansa would like Jon too, now, her former reservations about blood and propriety wiped clean in the scourge of war they’ve all suffered. But even as he wants them to meet, the idea fills him with a jealous ache and he’s glad of this time with her alone, only the two of them.
Once Robb would have been wracked with guilt, too ashamed by what he was feeling to even face her. Perhaps it was better that way. Certainly it was more honorable. But if Robb has learned only one thing these past years, it's that perhaps honor is its own punishment. So still he dresses her hair each evening and still the dreams haunt him, making him ache for her in ways not at all proper to brothers and sisters. He hopes that it will fade, but instead it worsens, until everything about her catches his notice, makes him feel restless and itchy and filled with painful awareness. He's caught by the regal set of her wrist when he helps her to her feet, the bones there pressing sharp and delicate against her skin. By the hitch of her breath when his fingers skim over the sensitive spot behind her right ear. By the way she leans into him in exactly the way she leans into Grey Wind, automatically, thoughtlessly, trustingly. The sweet lavender scent of her clings to his skin every night and lingers in his dreams until he surrenders to the need to touch himself, telling himself not to think of her with each stroke and miserably failing.
"My braids are getting much better, don't you think?" he says one night. He puts a determined lightness to his voice, he laughs even though it sounds forced to his own ears. His dreams the night before had been potent, devastating; all day he'd felt himself being driven mad by the need to touch her and learn her body's secrets, and now with her here between his knees, he's desperate to lighten the heavy air that floats between them and clogs his lungs like smoke. He's taken some of her ribbons and woven them into her plaits, colorful stripes winding through the red. It had taken some concentration to accomplish, which had been the entire point, as it left him far less able to think on the warmth of her against his legs, the sweet trust with which she submits to him each evening. He's inordinately proud of it and he ties the ribbons off with a flourish. "Perhaps I could find work as a lady's maid," he continues. "Leave this Lord business behind."
It takes him a moment to realize that her answering laugh is the first he's heard from her since her return. The sound of it takes him by surprise, a silvery sweet music that soothes his scarred heart as much as it stirs his blood. He's careful to make no overt notice of it, as if he could frighten her laughter away like a butterfly startled from a flower, but he can't stop the hand that curls around the back of her neck. It's no mere touch, no gentle contact from a brother; it's a lover's caress, and she freezes and makes a small gasping sound, her skin rippling into gooseflesh under his.
Before he can even remove his hand, she's pushing to her feet to stand awkwardly before him, hands fisted in her skirts. She thanks him, hastily, something she's never done before. Robb is too filled with self-recrimination to even respond. She opens her mouth again as if to speak, but words seem to fail her. She only looks at him, her eyes dropping to his mouth in a flicker so brief he knows he must have imagined it. And then she's gone, leaving him alone in her solar to stare at the door to her chambers as if he could see through it.
He feels the prickle of her skin all that night as he lies sleepless in his bed, hears her swift inhalation over and over. Permits himself the briefest, most wretched indulgence of thinking her gasp was of need rather than shock, of desire rather than disgust. The sound of it echoes in his ears even when he claps a pillow over his head and holds it tight with both hands. He can't banish it no matter how he tries.
“Perhaps you’re ready for your maids, now,” he says the next evening before she can settle at his feet, before she's more than a few steps past the threshold of the door, her face showing the barest hint of uncertainty. “That is. Perhaps it’s time.” He hates to say the words. He’d spent the last hour, waiting for her, steeling himself to force them from his lips. But it’s what’s best for her. He needs so desperately for her to feel safe with him. These nights with her curled between his knees test his control too much, make him need things he can't have and shouldn't want.
It takes a moment, it seems, for her to hear the words, to comprehend their meaning. Once she does, the effect is instantaneous. And brutal. Her face closes up like a flower blossom, assembling itself into a cold ivory mask. Only her eyes betray her, showing wounded and broken in her face before they too retreat behind her veil, so quickly he would have thought he imagined it if he didn’t know better.
“Sansa…” he starts, and suddenly he’s so furious he could kick himself. He’s worked so hard for her trust, how could he have thought to reject her like this without harm? She turns from him and moves to the window smoothly enough that most would see nothing amiss, but Robb knows her well enough to see the hitch in her movements, the brittle tension in the line of her spine.
Her shoulders are rigid when he moves behind her and places his hands on them. She’s so cold that he instinctively rubs his hands down to her elbows and back, then again, as if he could thaw her with his touch. “Sansa, please,” he whispers, surrendering to impulse and burying his face in the soft hair just behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I won’t leave you. I promise I’ll never leave you.”
At first she shows no response. He can see her face reflected in the glass, distorted in the rippling surface. Then she leans back, only the tiniest increment but enough that Robb feels it, and he can’t bottle up his relief, it comes rushing to the surface as he puts his arms around her fully, crosses them over her chest and pulls her back against him in a bruising embrace. He whispers her name in her ear, whispers apologies and promises. Slowly, so slowly that at first he thinks he’s imagining it, she turns her head, so that their temples press together, then their cheeks. And then his lips are on hers – or hers are on his, he can’t tell which – and Robb knows that the world he knew once will never exist again.
The kiss isn’t sweet or gentle or innocent. Even after the touch of their lips, it could have stayed chaste, a kiss from a sister to a brother, but Sansa’s desperation can’t be contained, and their mouths open, Sansa pushes her tongue at his hard and deep. It’s a world away from the kisses Robb’s shared with girls before. It’s nothing that he expected and everything that he wanted and he’ll hate himself forever for how he kisses her back, how he meets her desperation with his own.
She doesn't meet his eyes when she breaks away and hurries from the room, leaving him with his thoughts as poor company. Belatedly, Robb realizes she’s going to bed with her hair unbound. It could almost make him laugh, strangely. Almost.
He doesn’t see her the next day, though whether she’s avoiding him or he’s avoiding her, he couldn’t say. He would have thought the worst of it would be the guilt, the shame, the horrible certainty with which he knows how his father would have looked at him if he knew, how his mother would have paled and reeled to find out. But the worst is how much he misses her. The day seems endless without her company, without an evening spent with her to look forward to. The hours stretch into years, leaving him nothing but time to dwell, until he thinks he might go mad simply for something else to do.
He climbs the stairs to her solar that evening out of habit, or out of hope, he doesn’t know which. He expects to find the room empty, or the door barred and blocked to him forevermore, but to his surprise, the door is open and she’s there, waiting, sitting at the hearthstones and looking into the fire, one hand buried in Grey Wind’s ruff where he lays beside her. Robb feels a queer sense of reassurance to see his wolf with her, one he doesn’t entirely understand.
Sansa’s hair is bound in a style Robb doesn’t recognize. He wonders if she allowed her maids to dress it at last, or if she did it herself, before deciding that it doesn’t matter. Even though it was what he’d thought right, he still feels a pang of loss at the sight of it, already missing the hours he spent with her, fingers in the silk of her hair, their bodies closer than breathing. At a loss, he waits in the door, wonders at how they’ll carry on from now. How they’ll change. Then she looks at him over her shoulder, raises one pale hand to the intricate knots at her nape.
“Will you assist me?” she asks. Robb hesitates. He’s uncertain of what she asks. Maybe she is as well; her hand shakes visibly even in the dim light. But whatever her purpose, Robb would not deny her, not now, so he steps into the room, only to be brought up short when she says, her gaze switched back to the fire, “Lock the door, Robb.”
It’s like falling from a great height. Everything in his body feels weightless, his heart climbing into his throat and making him swallow hard. Knowing he should hesitate, knowing he shouldn’t get near her for both of their sakes, he takes long, slow steps across the floor. The stones are hard on his knees when he sinks behind her. The binds and twists of her hair are unfamiliar; he loosens them slowly, deliberately, giving her all chance to change her mind, to put a halt to this hurtling momentum between them. She doesn’t stop him, not as he pulls her hair free, not as he draws it through his fingers, not as he smoothes it over her shoulders and down her chest, stopping short of her breasts, though whether that’s because he’s too noble or too craven, he doesn’t know. She’s neither, though, and she catches his hand to flatten it on her breastbone, she turns her head to his, and they’re kissing with double the urgency and desperation of the night before. Robb has been with so few girls before, but even if he'd been with a hundred, it never would have prepared him for this.
She tilts her head back to his shoulder, the invitation of her lips more than he’d ever be capable of resisting. He curls his arm behind her head, splays that hand on her cheek to tilt her face to his, to hold her so he can lick deep into her mouth, sucking on her tongue and tasting the lemoncakes lingering there. Time warps and stretches, bending into some new creation, so that he doesn’t know if he kisses her for minutes or hours or days or years. Robb doesn’t think he even exists in his body anymore. It’s the push of her hips, the feel of her squirming back against him instinctively that breaks through the haze and brings him snapping back into himself with a burning sweet ache. She’s pulled back into the vee of his legs, his thighs spread wide to encompass hers, their hips moving restlessly together. Her knees have shifted wider, the top of her chest is flushed and damp above the bodice of her gown, and her breath comes in whimpering pants that are somehow both delicate and almost obscene. It’s wearing his control down to a single thread. Then she sneaks one hand behind her, works it between them to rub over the placket of his breeches. Even blunted through the thick weave of the fabric her touch is as potent as wildfire. He sets his mouth to the crook of her shoulder to let his groan vibrate over her skin.
Abruptly, she stands, moving away from him. He’s filled with a sickening feeling of panic, immobilized on the floor as he watches her cross to the door of her bedchamber, her steps sure and even. Then she pauses, one hand holding the door frame, holding it so tightly that her knuckles blanch under the pressure. She pauses and she looks back over her shoulder at him with eyes so hot he thinks he might burst into flame, and he knows that she means him to follow her. His gut clenches like a fist. It takes a moment before he thinks his feet will be steady beneath him. Just before he catches up to her at the door, she moves through, drawing him into her chambers in her wake. She stands before her bed when he enters, her back to him. She’s so still, her body carefully leashed, but he can see her hand opening and closing on her skirts, and the nervous gesture reassures him. His boots sound heavy on the stone floor as he walks to her, paces her like prey. He ghosts a hand over her back, his fingers spread in a five-pointed star between her shoulder blades, only a breath of space between his hand and her back. Then he closes that space, feels her body jerk at the touch, the movement sending her hair brushing over the back of his hand to tickle at his wrist.
The swell of her hip is visible under her skirts and he curves his hand over it. If he hadn’t been hard already, he thinks maybe the feel of her round and lush and perfect under his hand would have been enough to get him there. He slides the hand on her back up her nape, palms the base of her skull, runs his knuckles along the slope from neck to shoulder and down to curl over her collarbone. The white of her shoulder is pale under his fingers, warm against the soft blue of her gown, and he presses his lips to it, waiting until she shivers to open his mouth and taste her skin. When she reaches for his hand and catches it in her own, he feels a moment of fear that she’s changed her mind, that she’ll push him away, but she pulls it down to her breast, covers it with her own. Her shaky sigh sounds in his ears for just a moment before she moves his hand again, guides it in unlacing her bodice so she can push it beneath the fabric to touch her skin. A rumble builds in Robb’s chest. She’s small and perfectly fitted to his hand, her heart beating wild under his fingertips. Not thinking, completely mindless, Robb slides his hand from her hip to press at the juncture of her thighs. He knows she can feel it even through her skirts; her breath quickens, her nipple hardens beneath his other hand.
She pulls her gown over her head with steady hands, works her smallclothes down beneath her shift to kick them aside. He knows she means for him to do the same, and he sheds his clothing quickly, carelessly, not allowing himself to think beyond this moment, beyond this room. He can see every bit of her through the fine lawn of her shift, the curves and lines of her back and arse, and it dries his mouth, makes it so he can barely swallow. Still never facing him, she reaches back to grope blindly for his hand and climbs atop the bed, pulling him with her to kneel behind her. The mattress shifts with his weight, so that he has to catch her and hold her steady, fingers sinking into those lush hips, all the more enticing now with only a thin layer of linen to cover them. Again his hand moves to the top of her thighs, finds her with two fingers and presses, strokes, works over her until she jerks, gasping in great lungfuls of air. She rolls her head back, pressing her forehead to the hinge of his jaw, allowing him to kiss her just once more. And then she gathers the hem of her shift, pulls it up to her waist and drops forward to her hands and knees, revealing herself to him and making every drop of blood in his body drain straight into his cock.
Robb wishes he had any hesitation, but it seems like no such thing exists. He pushes into her, his hips bucking helplessly at her heat, at the tightness of her around his cock. He understands why she’s kept her back to him; this is too desperate for them to face each other, too raw and overwhelming. They can handle only the need, not the emotion. But still he betrays himself, his love for her showing in the way he circles an arm about her waist, in the way he stretches himself along her back to kiss each vertebrae one by one. In the slide of his hand over the curve of her belly, down through curls grown slick with her response, his fingers seeking her to give pleasure. He’s mindless at the feel of her, slick and perfect around him, shaking out her release. He’s surrounding her entirely, his chest to her back, his knees bracketing hers, calves pressed alongside calves. When he spends, he bites her neck, his teeth closing almost savagely on her nape like they’re mating animals, and he could almost be ashamed, but it feels too perfect.
He’s holding her against him with one arm, holding them both up with the other, and his elbow quivers at the strain. Slowly, allowing himself to slip from within her, he lets them both drop to the mattress, still back to front, still too raw to look at each other. Rolling both of them to the side, he curls around her, kisses the back of her neck through the sweat-damp veil of her hair. He holds her until she sleeps and then he joins her.
The light of the dawn is milky and dreamlike when he slips from the bed. Leaving her is far more a test of will than he’d ever expected it would be. Part of him wants to burrow closer rather than pulling away, wants to bury himself within her sweetness and never emerge. But that part can’t banish the guilt he feels, the anguish and shame.
His feet know the path to the godswood by heart, even though he rarely goes there anymore. It’s a place too tied to his father, too weighed down by memories and sadness. But Robb goes there now and he sits beneath the heart tree and he prays, or as close to it as he can manage after so many years. No voice speaks to guide him, no action from the gods comes to punish him. What he’s done with Sansa is wrong, it can be nothing but. But they’ve both had so much taken from them. How could Robb regret taking this small bit back, something just for each and the other, some small shield to protect them from the weight of the world? It’s too much for his mind to hold; a dull throb starts up behind his eyes and he drops his head to his hands.
Footsteps crunch through leaves on the path behind him before he’s found any solace, before he’s determined a path to take. Sansa, shivering with no cloak, moving to sit beside him beneath the heart tree. At first she doesn’t speak. Robb can feel her shoulder warm against his, despite her shivering. He can smell the lavender in her hair, the same scent that haunts him every night.
“Do you regret what we’ve done?” she says at length, her words stinging him with shock. Robb would never have expected her to be so direct.
“Sansa…” he says, lost and unsure. If he has no idea how he feels and what he should do, he has even less idea of her.
“You’re thinking we should stop,” she says.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “Perhaps.” The word strikes her like a blow. She flinches beside him, then stands and turns away. Robb thinks she makes to leave, but she moves to the trunk of the weirwood, places one hand against the smooth bark, her back to him.
“You promised never to leave me,” she says, and her voice sounds so small, so wounded and vulnerable that it breaks Robb’s heart neatly in half. Something floods him, some great and terrible feeling that he can't name. It billows within him like banners in the wind and he can't bear it any longer, not for one second longer. He pushes to his feet and moves to stand a breath behind her. Her hand is as pale as the tree it touches. He covers it with his own, breathes her name in her ear.
Over and over, he thinks they should stop, that he should stop, but her body makes of him a thousand requests – the tilt of her head that pleads for his mouth on her neck, the cant of her hips that begs for friction, the drag of her skirts up her thighs that invites him to find her heat with his fingers and push deep – requests that he can only grant, helpless in her need and in his. Placing his hands over hers on the pale bark of the weirwood, he takes her and thinks surely the gods will punish him, but damned if he can bring himself to care with her hot and wet around him, with her coming apart at his touch, pressing her cheek to the smooth heart tree with her mouth forming a word that could be his name.
When she comes to him that evening just after supper, finding him in his own solar for once rather than waiting for him to come to hers, it’s the first time he touches her without hesitation. He’s made his decision, the die is cast, and now he’ll glory in the feel of her while he can, gods punish or preserve them both. They go through the motions – she kneels before him, he winds her hair into a simple plait, they carry on the mummer’s dance of brother and sister. Then he loses his patience, kisses the spot behind her ear and deftly works his hand beneath her skirts to find her already wet for him. It only increases his urgency, deepens his desperation. Her smallclothes are pushed down and off, her skirts flipped over her back, his breeches not even fully unlaced. Again, she doesn’t face him, and Robb knows that this is how things will be, that this is an unspoken rule between them. He sits on his heels, pulls her back astride him and fucks her right there on the floor of his solar, Grey Wind instinctively lying in front of the door to bar anyone’s entry.
He’s less gentle than he should be. He tries to slow, to be mindful. But she feels like everything he’s ever wanted, and she’s making these sounds, these panting, urgent sounds that fray his control to nothingness. The sounds of their coupling fill the room, damp slaps and choked groans that only make him want more, need more. Her hips give under his fingertips when he grabs at them, sinks his fingers into the yield of her to pull her back to meet him. She shudders and leans forward to grip the arms of the chair in front of her and it changes the angle of her hips, pulls her tighter about him so that he shudders to match. The weight of her braid drags it over her shoulder, baring the nape of her neck where the hair grows soft and fine, fuzzing into damp curls over skin so pale and vulnerable that it hits Robb like a mailed fist in his gut.
The quiver of her around him gives warning, promising her release in just moments. Wanting to be there with her, he leans over her back, curls his hands over hers on the arms of the chair and drives in to her hard and fast, his body tightening and finding his completion as she comes down from hers. She drops her forehead to rest against the seat cushion, a slippery sigh escaping her lips. Robb’s knees hurt. His body feels as if it’s been turned inside out. But still a warm glow suffuses him, sends tendrils of heat creeping out under his skin, and as he tastes the salt at her nape – as he presses his lips to that vulnerable, perfect patch of Sansa – he thinks that maybe he doesn’t need the godswood. Maybe this is its own sort of prayer.
They never speak of it. What’s going on between them is too complex, too fragile. Too dangerous for words to hold. So they don’t speak of it and they never face each other. He takes her against the wall, his hand protecting her cheek from the rough stone. Bent over the desk in his solar. On his lap in the chair by the fire, her breasts in his hands and her knees hooked over the arms of the chair to leave her exposed. They fuck everywhere, endlessly, and still they need, still they want, their urgency never diminishing or abating. Robb would have thought they would be sated, that shame would overtake need, but it doesn’t happen. And after all the wrongs the world has done them, he can’t bring himself to care if they’re giving a wrong back to the world.
He doesn’t know if she’d been a maid when she came to him, nor how she thinks to protect herself from pregnancy now. He doesn’t ask. Part of him wants to believe she didn’t spend their years apart lonely and unloved, that she had someone, some person to hold her and touch her. Another part is all too aware of how the circumstances of such things could have been violent for her, bleak and unwilling, and that he had condemned her to that life by not trading her for Jaime Lannister earlier, something he doesn't know if she could forgive him for but that he knows he can't forgive himself. Yet a third part has no room for careful thought at all; it’s nothing but primal rage and jealousy at the thought of any other touching her, taking her the way Robb does. It’s that part that makes him turn to her in the night, even though an hour before he’d thought them both sated and exhausted, makes him pull her leg over his hip and push into her, her body soft and sleep-warmed, her fingers curled around his ear, the sounds she makes sighs instead of gasps, murmurs instead of moans. Her tenderness does nothing to soothe the fire in his belly but feeds it, fills him with possessive greed. She’s his, she’s his, and he’ll never have enough.
It’s Jon’s raven that breaks the spell. It wasn’t as if Robb had forgotten that others of their siblings are alive – he still believes all of them are, or hopes, at least – but it’s been so easy to feel like he and Sansa are all that’s left while they’ve been here in Winterfell together. It’s been easy to think that this will be their life forever, his and Sansa’s, and that maybe they can find a way to be happy. Hearing from Jon brings it all crashing down around Robb’s ears. Jon’s found Bran, though, and that makes up for anything else. They’d already been on their way when Jon sent off the raven, probably riding out from Castle Black even as it flew overhead. They’ll be here in only days. Robb has only days.
He can’t bring himself to tell Sansa at first. He wants to, he tries, but each time the words freeze up in his mouth, crowding at the back of his tongue. How could he ever tell her when he knows this means it’s the end of them?
His touches that night are long and slow, almost torturous. He brings her off with his fingers before either even sheds their clothing, then sets about doing it again, dragging his hand up slow and circling only to push inside her again, loving the feel of her hot and slick to his touch as she begs and pleads and says Robb, oh fuck, Robb, her words vulgar in her need. She’s trembling uncontrollably when she drops to her hands and knees before him, spreading her knees wide as if to entice him into the action he withholds. It almost proves tempting beyond his control, she’s flushed and wet and perfect, right there and ready for him, but he wants something else this time, he wants to know her in a way he never has before. The way she jerks when his tongue touches her is intensely satisfying, almost as much as the surprised moan that sounds from her throat. He smiles, smoothes the back of his hand up her inner thigh before opening her more to his mouth, to the hot, curious exploration of his tongue. The taste of her is intoxicating, a hundred times better than the finest Dornish wine.
It’s not something he’s ever done before, having only heard of it in the training yard or discussed raucously by his men, and he’s sure by her stunned response that she’s not done such a thing either. So this one thing they surely share, they experience it for the first time together, and he’s savagely glad of it. She tosses her head, makes such unleashed noises that he wishes he’d done this at the beginning. Her response is wet and warm on his lips and chin, and he can’t stop talking each time he raises his head to take in breath, can’t stop himself from saying, sweet, so sweet, gods, Sansa, I want my tongue in your cunt forever, beyond caring about his crudeness, and she’s stunned and gasping, squirming and working herself back rhythmically to meet his tongue with a devastating lack of hesitation or inhibition. When her pleasure takes her, she shakes with such force that her arms can’t hold her and she falls to the bed on her stomach, lies wrung out and boneless, still shaking from her release. He fucks her like that, lying atop her, his feet spreading her ankles apart, his mouth sucking a dark purple bloom on the side of her neck that he knows she won’t be able to hide. It marks her as his. Only his and no one else’s, no matter who should come along.
“There was a raven from Jon,” he forces himself to say as they dine the next afternoon. “The other day. He’s already on his way. With Bran.” She sets down her fork, swallowing a mouthful and staring down at her plate as if the answer to a riddle were spelled on it in script. If Robb isn’t careful, he’ll see his own sadness mirrored on Sansa’s face, the crippling knowledge that their time together like this is at an end. He’ll take all of his own feelings and wrap them around her like a veil, seeing them in her when they aren’t there. Surely they aren’t there. They can’t be. He can’t let them be.
“That’s good,” she says, then repeats the last word, “good,” her voice trailing off into a silence so laden with meaning that it might as well be a scream.
“Yes,” Robb says. He lifts his wine glass and drains it in one long swallow. “Good.”
She’s already in her bed when he climbs to her chambers after supper, her solar empty and seeming cavernous without her and Grey Wind’s presence to fill it. Robb follows the thump of Grey Wind’s tail to her bedchamber. Grey Wind whines in greeting to him as he leans in the open doorway, taking in the way she’s curled on her side, knees tucked up under her nightshift, hands fisted beneath her chin like she’s a little girl again. It makes it easy to remember her as the Sansa he once knew. Then she looks up at him with a woman’s eyes, the eyes of the Sansa he knows now, and it would be impossible to look away even if he wanted to. Slowly, giving her time to tell him not to, he sheds his clothes, climbing on to the bed to face her back. She trembles under his hand when he spans it between her shoulder blades, then she rolls to face him, watching him, studying him. Memorizing him, he has a fanciful notion. He permits himself small indulgences – a wisp of hair brushed from her temple, a thumb run down the plane of her cheek. Her name breathed out soft and low enough to sound like prayer. Just when he thinks he’ll go mad if he can’t pull her to him, she moves forward and kisses him, for a long time only holding her lips unmoving against his, as if seeking permission. As if seeking absolution.
He knows now why they never faced each other. It’s too raw, too painful and beautiful and sad. Too easy to feel too much. Too hard not to. Facing her lets him see the tremble of her lower lip when he slides one hand low against her, her eyes expanding into darkness when he moves inside her with her shallow panting echoing the rhythm of his hips. It lets him kiss her, claim her mouth with his as if he’d never relinquish it, lets him hold her and draw the breath from her lungs into his and know that she’s his sister, his Sansa, and that soon she won’t be his anymore and he’d take any punishment from gods old or new, would happily burn in all seven hells if only it meant he wouldn’t have to give her up.
“Robb,” she says, tears in her voice as she moves against him, as she twines her legs about his hips, her arms around his neck, a clinging vine that would pull apart the wall it holds if anyone ever tried to tear it down.
“Sansa,” he tells her, knowing what she can’t say, knowing at last that she feels the same as he. “Sansa.” And he kisses her, draws everything she would give from her lips and gives it back.
The morning Jon is to arrive, they stand in the courtyard shoulder to shoulder, neither of them speaking or meeting the other’s eyes. They watch the horizon together, stare at the road leading into Winterfell as Grey Wind paces the yard, restless and somehow bereft. Soon Jon will appear over that hill, Jon and Bran and Ghost, and their family will grow. Soon Robb and Sansa will be alone no longer. Strange that Robb should feel more alone than ever, then.
Sansa’s hand is cool and slender in Robb’s when he reaches blindly for it and wraps it in his own. Everything’s changed between them, and it will never be the same again, but no gods old or new could punish him for holding his sister’s hand. So he holds her tight even as he lets her go and together they wait for the future to come.