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Sansa goes home.
.
It doesn't look like home. The walls are scorched, the glass gardens are smashed, the stable has collapsed, and the inside is littered with debris and grime. Her lady mother would've been horrified, but her lady mother is dead, so that makes no difference.
Sansa's old bedchambers are a ruin of ripped wall hangings and dirty sheets. Someone has torn the pages out of the books she used to read and smashed the face of the doll Vayon Poole, her father's dead steward, gave her for her tenth nameday. A thin layer of dust covers almost everything and the whole room smells like dirt and blood and the sweat of dead men. Sansa can't bear to stay there for than a few minutes. Even her past hasn't remained untouched.
She sleeps in one of the guest chambers from then on. She doesn't know who had occupied it beforehand, perhaps Lord Manderly or an Umber, or even - the thought makes her skin crawl - a Frey. but it is clean, and mostly neat, not like the majority of the rooms in what used to be Winterfell.
Besides, it seems to fit, somehow. Sansa is a guest in Winterfell. It is her home no longer. The only ones who truly belong here are the ghosts.
.
They tell her her brother has been found, Rickon, the youngest, the baby, and Sansa cries for the first time since leaving the Vale. They warn her that he is different, unruly, having spent years on the island of Skagos, but still she is unprepared when she finally reunites with him.
Rickon is not just unruly, as Bran had been, he is wild. He speaks to no one but himself and Shaggydog, who has grown almost as big as a horse, but he shrieks and screams and rages in some language, some mixture of Skagosi and the Common Tongue. He runs barefoot through the halls of Winterfell and hides behind doors and disappears into the forests and doesn't return until Sansa is frantic with worry.
Worst of all, though, is that he doesn't remember her. She tries, so hard, she shows him games they used to play together, she sings him songs she used to sing when she was a little girl, but he shakes his head (his curly hair reminds her so much of Robb it takes her breath away) and bares his little teeth.
"Don't you remember anyone?" she asks him in despair.
"Bran Bran Bran Bran Bran," he chants. "Robb Robb Robb. Mother. Want Mother"
"Sansa," she says. "Arya." But he only stares at her blankly. She does not know how to help him. Their lady mother is dead, Robb is dead, and though she sees Bran's face in the trees and hears his voice in the winds, she doesn't know where he is, or if he is even alive.
Sometimes, though, when she is praying in the godswood, he will come and sit by her for a few moments. He will gaze at the heart tree and his lips will move silently.
"What do you wish for?" she asks him once, but he ignores her and grabs a red weirwood leaf, crushing it in his palm.
She begins to wonders if he is mad.
.
Winter is in its second year when a gray-faced girl in a threadbare cloak arrives at Winterfell. It is Jeyne Poole, her old childhood friend. They had played dolls together at five, learned to dance at nine, and gossiped about boys at twelve. They are sixteen, now, but Jeyne, once so lively and bright and spirited, reminds Sansa of an old woman. Her hair is thin and limp, she is missing part of her nose, and her hands shake when she speaks.
Jeyne doesn't like it in Winterfell at all. She is only there because she has nowhere else to go, an orphan like Sansa, but not like Sansa, for she is not of noble birth, not important. Just another causality of war. And there are far too many causalities. No one besides Sansa has sympathy to spare for her.
The castle frightens her in an unexplainable way. The smallest things make her break out in tears: the barking of a dog, footsteps on the stairs, the sound of the wind as it whooshes around the towers. She sleeps in Sansa's new chambers and Sansa is often awoken by the sound of her sobbing in the night. But she doesn't mind. Sansa has grown used to sleepless nights and broken hearts. It is nothing new to her.
They tell Sansa that Jeyne had pretended to be Arya, and Sansa thinks of her sister, who disappeared like smoke in King's Landing and never was seen again. She pictures Arya on the summer isles, sipping on wine, challenging passerbys to duels. She pictures Arya dead in a ditch next to the Kingsroad. Mostly, though, she pictures Arya's ghost, stalking the halls of Winterfell, sword in hand. She pictures Arya drawing that sword and plunging it into Sansa's stomach. You forgot me, Sansa, says Arya. You forgot me, but you'll never forget me again.
After five moons in Winterfell, Jeyne decides to join the silent sisters, where no person will look her in the eye and no man will ever touch her again. Winterfell will never be her home like it once was. Now it is only her former prison.
Sansa watches her leave, the snow falling thickly past her window. Tears threaten, but Sansa pushes them back determinedly. There is no use in weeping over stolen youth.
.
It is not long before the godswood is covered in snow, the heart tree's face almost buried, but Sansa has her men clear a path for her every day, and she prays in her thick furs and blankets. The godswood is what saved her at King's Landing and she will never stoop so low as to abandon it.
One morning, just as she is kneeling to pray, Bran's gray direwolf appears beside her and settles himself down as if he has always belonged there. Hope flares in her chest like a torch, and she sends her men out to look for her little brother, certain he is stuck somewhere near, unable to get help.
The men search for five days, but Bran is not found. What's more, his direwolf refuses to leave Winterfell and help them track, preferring to rest beside the fire in Sansa's chambers and mock-fight with Shaggydog. Rickon is no help, either. Sansa has questioned him many times about Bran, hoping for a hint, some small clue, as to where he might have gone, but the memory of parting from Bran makes Rickon so upset that Sansa usually ends up trying to comfort him as he sobs the angry tears of an abandoned child. All he can say is that Bran left with Hodor and two other children, the Reeds, whom Sansa doesn't know. She has sent ravens to Howland Reed before, but there is never a reply, and she has been advised to give it up.
Rickon does tell her that the wolf is named Summer. Summer is a fitting name, Sansa decides. He is not wild and fierce like Shaggy, but possesses a quiet strength of his own. And he is gentle with Sansa, like Lady had been. Sansa wonders if Summer misses Lady like she misses Bran.
Yet somehow, being with the direwolf makes her feel close to Bran, like he is right beside her, like a part of him is Summer. Sansa has always had the feeling that she could sense Bran, especially when praying in the godswood, but, ever since Summer's arrival, when she sits in front of the heart tree, it is almost as if she can hear him speaking to her, in the very depths of her mind.
I'm alright, he tells her. I have a duty to do, just like you. And you need Summer more than me. Take care of him.
"When are you coming home?" she asks out loud, but the only sound is the weirwood trees shaking in the winter winds. Sansa doesn't know what she was expecting.
.
Winter is in its fourth year when Rickon is crowned King in the North. The gray metal of his child-sized crown looks stunning against his red curls, but he refuses to wear it or sit in his throne. Father's chair, he insists, and when Sansa reminds him again that Father is long dead, Shaggydog snarls so viciously even Sansa herself is frightened.
She gets a crown as well, slim and silver, as Queen Regent in the North. It is a hasty, foolish title, she knows. She was wise enough to rid herself of Petyr, wise enough to escape the Eyrie, wise enough to reclaim her former home. She is not yet wise enough to rule a kingdom, much less a starving one buried in snow and ice and stalked by undead creatures with glowing eyes. But the North is uneasy and unstable, and calm, sad-eyed Sansa paints a more agreeable portrait than the vengeful boy the smallfolk call the Black Wolf, the child who is winter's fury personified.
There is a third crown as well. It is heavy and sharp and drenched in invisible blood, king's blood. It rests on the table in the council chambers, and whenever Sansa holds court, her eye is drawn to its shining surface. Sometimes she'll try it on, though it is much, much too big and makes her head ache. Sometimes she'll imagine that her elder brother will suddenly appear and tell her what to do, give her all the answers she is searching for.
She is older now than Robb ever was. A victory, but not the kind she wants.
.
The smallfolk come to see her when they can, when it it warm enough to leave their homes without freezing to death, when they can make the journey without being attacked by wights, when they still have legs to walk with. They kiss her hands and praise her hair. They cast fearful glances at the direwolves and Rickon, when he deigns to show himself. They complain of food shortages, of huts being buried in snow, of dead husbands and brothers and grandmothers and children. They plead for her to help them.
Sansa does not know how to help them. Can't they see she needs help herself? Many of the lords who crowned her have left Wintefell, to return to their own families and own smallfolk. Her household is small, mostly made up of soldiers and servants. She does not even have a maester. A man named Samwell Tarly was supposed to have come, but the journey north is too dangerous at the moment.
Her father had had Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik. Robb had had half the lords of the Seven Kingdoms. Sansa has no one. I am only eighteen! she wants to scream. An adult by Westerosi standards, but she feels more helpless than ever.
Eventually, the smallfolk stop coming. Sansa does not know if the weather is too harsh, or if they simply have nothing more to say. Perhaps they are all dead already.
.
Sansa takes to wandering through the castle at night, to braiding and unbraiding her hair for hours on end, to standing outside in the snow in her smallclothes, to ripping the pages out of Bran's old books, to sitting in the godswood until her fingers freeze together, to embroidering her dresses with lavish designs and then taking every single stitch out one by one.
.
She knows Winterfell is haunted. But it is the worst kind of haunted. She can deal with nameless ghosts, faceless ghosts. She can not deal with the ghosts of people she once loved.
Robb's ghost dances with her in her dreams, Arya's ghost follows her down Winterfell's dark halls, Bran's ghost whispers to her from the tops of the trees, her mother's ghost runs her fingers through Sansa's hair and Rickon refuses to go near the crypts, insisting that their father's ghost lingers there. Even Jon's ghost watches her quietly, flickering in and out of sight. Sansa has searched all of Winterfell, every nook and cranny, but she is unable to find a single place not haunted by her dead family. She can not even look at angry little Rickon without seeing both Robb and Arya in his wild blue eyes.
The snow falls so thick it buries the castle. Winterfell grows lonely and freezing and silent, even Rickon and Shaggydog preferring to lurk in the shadows than menace what few maids and servants they have. Sansa sits upon her icy throne, Robb's crown heavy on her head, Summer curled up next to her feet. Outside the winds are howling and men are fighting and the North is straining to hold up against the blue eyed demons that plague them, but inside the dust swirls and footsteps echo and it is so quiet you can hear Rickon whispering to himself and the ghosts sighing mournfully.
This castle is a grave, she thinks. I will grow as mad as Rickon before long.
Oh, Sansa, her lady mother says, placing a kiss to Sansa's head. You already are.