Footfalls echoed through the cold stone chamber; the muffled sound of heavy skirts dragged across the floor.

Expressionless, unseeing eyes watched the women, as Sansa strode the now familiar passages of her family’s crypts. As a child she had rarely visited these dank halls housing the Stark dead going back generations. She had found them gloomy and boring. Anyway, she had known she would never end up here. She would marry the charming, handsome prince and make an elegant, sophisticated life in the capital, far from the rough and rural North; she would give her devoted husband many beautiful, golden-haired children and at the end of a long and happy life, be laid to rest by his side in Kings Landing, in the Light of the Seven.

The auburn-haired woman winced inwardly at the vacuous foolishness of her youth. She glanced at the still, stone figures half hidden in shadow and wondered, as she always did, if any other Starks had ever been so naïve; or if any had ever been so grateful to be back home in Winterfell.

Daenerys watched Sansa carefully. Tyrion had told the Dragon Queen a bit of the Stark girl’s life in Kings Landing; she knew the woman carried a heavy burden.

Sansa’s steps slowed as they rounded a corner and she found the faces of her family.

The countenance of Ned’s statue, sturdy and solid, bore little resemblance to her father but she took comfort gazing upon it nonetheless. Until Arya had returned, Sansa had imagined she was the last Stark to ever see Ned alive. She found further comfort knowing that, in some way, she was not as alone as she had felt, in the midst of that great baying crowd, when Ser Ilyn Payne sliced off their father’s head.

Ned was flanked by the tall figure of Sansa’s eldest brother, Robb, who along with their mother, had been slaughtered in the cruelest massacre in Westerosi memory, and by her youngest brother, Rickon, only a child when he was cut down by Sansa’s sadistic husband, Ramsay Snow. Two great stone direwolves guarded the boys in death. Grey Wind sat upright at Robb’s side, his bearing as regal as his master’s. Rickon’s cold fingers tangled deep into the unruly matted fur of Shaggy Dog, a beast as large as the child, with the same wild, wary eyes.

Daenerys gazed at the statutes, particularly Ned, with a somber curiosity. “Your father was a great man. And a good one,” she observed quietly. “When Robert sent assassins to kill me and my unborn child, your father defied him to try and save me.”

Sansa furrowed her brow and looked at the silver-haired woman in surprise.

“Lord Varys told me.” Daenerys explained. “It seems your father quarreled with Robert over the matter and quit the Small Council for a time.”

The pale woman smiled with satisfaction and glanced back to Ned’s tomb. “That sounds like him.” She absently traced Rickon’s hair with her fingers. “I didn’t know Father had trouble with the Small Council before…”

The Dragon Queen waited, watching Sansa.

“…before he discovered Cersei’s secret…before Littlefinger betrayed his trust…before the council imprisoned him and let Joffrey kill him,” she finished without emotion.

Daenerys reluctantly voiced the question now pressing on her mind. “Do you think his refusal to harm me helped turn the council against him?”

Sansa regarded the woman carefully. “No,” she assured her. “My father was doomed the moment he confronted Cersei with the truth about her children,” she finished with a bitter laugh. The younger girl pursed her lips and shook her head slowly, recalling snatches of overheard conversations, Court gossip which she had turned over in her mind a hundred times. “Besides Robert, I don’t think anyone believed you posed a threat at the time. No one expected you to return to Westeros.” Sansa smiled ruefully. “No one ever expects anything of women, do they?”

Daenerys recalled the shocked face of Kranznys mo Nakloz, when she turned Drogon on the slave master and liberated the Unsullied, triggering the sack of Astapor; she remembered facing down the hostile khals who had likewise tried, and failed, to enslave a dragon. “No,” the Queen agreed, smiling. “No one ever does.”

“Don’t make the same mistake with Cersei,” Sansa warned, her voice steely and calm as she met Daenerys’ violet eyes. “She is clever and ruthless…and manipulative. She will welcome the Long Night, surrender the Seven Kingdoms to the Others and rule as the Night Queen before she will submit to you.” The Stark girl glanced briefly at her father’s statue before continuing quietly, “Cersei is the best player I’ve ever seen. She would have done anything to protect herself and her children.”

“Well, she has no children now,” Daenerys observed simply, her breath hanging briefly before her face as she hugged her fur cloak closer about her shoulders.

“That makes her desperate and even more dangerous,” Sansa shot back, her voice echoing off the Stark tombs. “You don’t know her, and neither does Jon. And Tyrion cannot understand her, not completely. He cannot understand what it is to be a woman married off against your will, hoping for the best, only to realize your husband is a lecherous drunk…or far, far worse. To be dismissed and silenced, to be denied power over your own life, your own body…to lose your children one by one…” The auburn-haired woman inhaled deeply, drinking in the cold air, choosing her words carefully. “I lived with her. I observed her. I learned from her.” Sansa laughed harshly. “She was a most cruel teacher but an effective one.” She looked back to Daenerys. “I do not sympathize with Cersei’s actions. But I can understand her.” She tilted her head slightly as she regarded the Dragon Queen. “And I think you can too. She has lost everything, except the power she had longed for and had been denied her entire life. She will go down fighting to keep it and she will take the whole world with her if she must.”

Daenerys met Sansa’s gaze. “I understand, I do.” Firelight from the torches played across her features and shimmered like gold in her silver hair. “Once we defeat the Night King, Cersei will round on us before the last wight has fallen. I know that. We will be ready for her.”

The Lady of Winterfell raised an eyebrow, thinking of her half-brother Jon and his naïve nobility. He knew Cersei was very dangerous but after the parley in King’s Landing, he seemed content enough to ally with her forces in the Great War to Come. He trusted her to see reason, to set aside personal ambition to secure the common good. Jon was so very like their father.

Reading her thoughts, the older woman reiterated, “We will be ready for her. I will be ready for her.”

“Is that a promise or a plan?” Sansa pressed.

“A promise of a plan,” Daenerys countered. “And a promise that after we defeat the Others and Cersei and remake the world, you will not be dismissed and silenced, Lady Sansa. And neither you, nor I, nor any woman, will be sold into marriage against her will.”

Sansa’s wide eyes shone in the darkness, reflecting a longing tinged with doubt. She paused before sweeping past her father and brothers and stepping through the arch leading deeper into the gloom of the crypts. Sansa turned back to the Dragon Queen. “That is a lovely vision, Your Grace.” She smiled at Daenerys, unconvinced but unwilling to disabuse the Queen of her aspirations to a better way of life. “We can all hope for such a world.”

The Targaryen followed the Stark girl, watching her slip in and out of shadow. She noted Sansa’s wariness and could not fault her for it. Daenerys had been born into the chaos of war and exile. Embodying the words of her House, she had fought her way to power through fire and blood. She had known the cruelties of the world for as long as she could remember. Sansa, however, had been born into a peaceful Summer to a loving family, in a secure and prosperous home, only to lose everything. Daenerys could never restore Sansa’s family, but perhaps she could restore her hope.

The chill sharpened as they approached another trio of tombs. Daenerys gasped an icy gulp of air as she instinctively recognized the stone figures before her.

Sansa’s steps slowed. She watched Daenerys’ violet eyes, inky and troubled in the darkness, fall upon Lord Rickard Stark and his son Brandon, both murdered by Daenerys’ father, the Mad King, trying to save the woman entombed beside them.

It was Lyanna Stark whom the Dragon Queen approached. Lyanna—kidnapped, raped and killed by Daenerys’ “gentle” eldest brother Prince Rhaegar. Lyanna—whose loss Robert Baratheon launched a rebellion to avenge; a rebellion that destroyed Daenerys’ family and doomed her to be born into exile. She felt a greater thrall than she had expected, before the bones of the woman whom she had never known, but whose destiny was so intimately intertwined with her own.

The torches crackled softly, throwing pools of light across the still faces of flesh and stone below. Daenerys heard only the pounding of her heart as she gazed upon Sansa’s family…Jon’s family—Rickard’s solemn countenance, Brandon’s imposing figure, dynamic even in death, and Lyanna–her oval face and round eyes so like Arya’s, but with an enigmatic, restless charm all her own.

Shivering, the Queen reached out her pale hand. She suddenly glanced at Sansa, as if to ask permission, which the auburn-haired woman granted with an almost imperceptible nod.

Daenerys touched Lyanna’s cold face, trying to reach back through time and understanding. This woman, defined by the violence, desire, and grief of men, was herself a cipher. What life had she dreamt of for herself? What dreams died with her?

The Targaryen queen searched the dead girl’s face for answers, but Lyanna kept her secrets, shrouded in shadow. The firelight grew hot on Daenerys’ skin, already flushed with the shame and confusion warring within her.  She wondered for what seemed the hundredth time, why Ned Stark had fought to save her life—knowing nothing about her, except that her father and brother had murdered his family.

“Father said she was vivacious and strong-willed. He attributed it to the Stark “wolf-blood,” Sansa observed, breaking the deep silence. “I think he meant she was as stubborn as Arya,” she added with a wry laugh.

The silver-haired woman shot Sansa a strained smile as she stepped back from Lyanna, tucking her hand back into the folds of her heavy cloak.

“I always knew what my father and brother did to them,” the queen said evenly. “But…I didn’t know how it would feel to stand before their tombs…or to befriend Ned Stark’s children.”

“And yet, here we are,” Sansa marveled quietly, almost to herself, taking her own measure of this moment, suspended at the hinge of past, present and future. The flames snapped, throwing shards of lights in the gloom. “Here we are,” she repeated, her eyes shining brightly.

Her words hung in the frigid air, between the living and the dead.

As Sansa considered all she and Daenerys had lost, and all they had survived, to arrive at this most improbable and extraordinary moment, hope glimmered uncertainly within her, like the firelight flickering in the darkened crypt.

The End.

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