Chapter Text
Chapter One:
Melisandre finds her, hours into the Battle for the Dawn. The Red Priestess is wearing her usual silk dress, heedless of the freezing, howling blizzard that whips the thin material about her pale flesh. The only difference Sansa can see is the sword the woman carries, strapped to her back; what is visible of the shining steel is reflecting bright-red under the light of distant bonfires.
Sansa is standing on one of the turrets built into Winterfell's battlements, where archers tirelessly fire flaming arrow after flaming arrow into the unending press of the rotting dead that crash against the massive, grey granite walls protecting Winterfell, endless wights that fight and slaughter and ravage without tiring, puppets of otherworldly commanders in their icy armour, wielding crystalline swords, while Northern men fall and bleed, weep and perish under the onslaught. On a battlement further to the left of her, soldiers are firing from catapults boulders set alight with pitch, oil, animal fat– whatever they could gather from Winterfell's stores. The sight is nearly beautiful, Sansa thinks, set against the dark of the sky; like bleeding red stars falling to the earth below. It almost makes up for the eye-watering stench.
"What do you want?" She asks Melisandre sharply when the woman stops beside her. Sansa's guards shift uneasily, but at a gesture they return to releasing a flame-lit hail of iron from their bows that snaps bone and explodes skulls.
Good, Sansa thinks, savage as a snarling, bleeding wolf. They stole our Dawn– but we'll claw it back from their icy, rotted hands.
Her own hands are badly torn and bleeding from her efforts at the bow. She's no warrior, no marksman, but she knows the importance of keeping up morale amongst the troops. A good ruler lets themselves be visible to their men; Sansa is wearing Stark white and grey under a silver cuirass she asked Arya's blacksmith to make her. It is quick work, crushing the curves of her breasts beneath the hard steel, but she asked for haste, not quality– he had more important weapons to be forging and it serves its intended purpose. She is clearly visible to her people, her red hair fluttering about in the strong wind in a crimson banner of war.
The value of symbolism, of sending a message to her people, is also why she is also wearing a wreath of winter roses and weirwood leaves fixed atop her head. It is the only sign of discontent she will show, but it bolsters her Northern lords, it tells them that the Starks of Winterfell have not forgotten; they are not about to let a Southern Queen steal their freedom away. They remember the Northern daughter stolen away and raped to death by a Targaryen prince. They remember a Stark heir and a Stark lord unjustly imprisoned and brutally murdered by a Targaryen king. They will not kneel to a Targaryen Queen.
That is, Sansa thinks darkly, if any of them survive the Long Night.
It irks her, as she looks from her torn hands, her sleeves stained red where the blood has run down her wrists, soaking into the pale fabric, to the battlefield, that roiling sea of shrieks and moans, then to Melisandre; pristine and untouched through the hours of fighting. Sansa does not bother to hide the irritation from her face. Considering the slaughter of bone and death occurring around them, it is the safest emotion she can feel.
"Your grace," the Red Priestess curtseys gracefully.
"I'm not a queen," Sansa replies flatly. She has no interest in Melisandre's games.
"Aren't you?" the red woman asks, an almost pityingly condescending look on her face.
Sansa purses her lips.
Melisandre... isn't wrong. Since they received the letter from Jon that he bent the knee to Daenerys, and in front of Cersei at that, the Northern lords had treated her differently. They had always respected her, the eldest trueborn daughter of Eddard Stark, the Stark Princess who had been held hostage by Lannisters and Boltons both, who had endured atrocities at the hands of monstrous men, but they were more eager to obey her, to serve her, to seek her favour.
Yet such things matter little, at the end of all things.
"Do you know what will happen, when Westeros falls?" Melisandre asks and Sansa cannot help but flinch at the certainty in the woman's voice, as if the Red Priestess can pluck the thoughts from her mind. Perhaps she can– Sansa knows not what Melisandre's powers are capable of. "The white walkers will create great, floating icebergs to carry all the dead of Westeros, their army of millions, across the Narrow Sea," Melisandre says, her eerie red eyes flickering like a living flame. "Lorath, Pentos and Braavos will fall, the Three Daughters soon after, the Empire of Yi-Ti next, and then whoever is left north of the Summer Islands who hasn't starved or frozen will follow, falling to famine and ice."
"What do you want?" Sansa asks, barely audible over the screams of dead and dying men. Melisandre gestures out across the battleground, where the tides of war swept back and forth; wight-hordes frenzied by warm flesh, white walkers armoured in ice and snow and splattered blood, bonfires alight with piled silhouettes, carrying the stench of roasted flesh as the North's dead burned before they could join the Night King's ranks.
"I want this to be over," the Red Priestess says, "I want the Dawn."
"Is that not what we are all here for?" Sansa snarls, biting and furious, a wolf wounded and frightened and using her rage to hide it. Melisandre's eyes fix on hers unnervingly and Sansa freezes because there is something looking back at her from the Red Priestess's eyes, something Ancient and Otherworldly and Powerful. It takes her breath away, speeds her heart in her chest, where it flutters madly like the little bird Sandor always accused her of being.
"And what are you willing to do for our victory, Sansa of House Stark?" Melisandre asks, except it isn't her voice; it is deep and echoing and grates against Sansa's ears, building up like so much pressure she thinks they must start to bleed. "What are you willing to sacrifice, Child of Brandon's Line?"
Sansa swallows, looking deeper into Melisandre's eyes, into the presence there, the flickering flame that dances so hypnotically.
"Anything," she whispers, thinking of the churning mass of screaming bone, of stolen dawn and summer days and a childhood innocence that tasted of lemons. "Everything."
"So mote it be, Queen of Winter," the presence using Melisandre's mouth speaks and Sansa feels a freezing cold envelop her bones, spreading from inside out, as if anchoring into her very soul. Before her, Melisandre shudders then her eyes clear.
There's something almost like sorrow in the Red Priestess's mien now. A faint shadow of regret that passes through those eerie red eyes too quickly for Sansa to parse the true meaning behind it.
"The Ancient books of Asshai wrote of the Long Night," Melisandre tells her, "it was written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed red and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him."
"What does this have to do with me?" Sansa asks. She tries to speak sharply but her voice is too shaky for it to sound authoritative. Melisandre looks back at her, gaze weighted with meaning.
"Everything," she says, before reaching out and seizing on to Sansa's forearm. Her grip feels like a shackle. Sansa's guards should notice Melisandre's actions, should move to stop her– they don't even glance over. It is like Sansa and the Red Priestess have turned invisible to them.
"Take off the armour," Melisandre tells her, "it will get in the way."
Sansa swallows but does as ordered, tugging her arm free of the other woman's grip briefly to fight the clasps of the cuirass, her fingers stiff with cold and slippery with blood. Melisandre sighs sharply then steps forwards to help, her movements quick and efficient. Sansa is reminded of the rumours that Melisandre used to be Stannis Baratheon's lover. She wonders if Melisandre would help remove his armour, after battle. Men's blood runs hot after killing, or so her experiences with Ramsay have informed her.
Melisandre leaves the cuirass discarded on the snow-dusted stone. Sansa has to turn away from a sight that appears so– final.
She is the Lady of Winterfell, she should never be the one led in her own castle, yet it is Melisandre who leads her down off the battlements, through corridors and halls silent as a grave, into the empty courtyard where the sound from beyond the walls fully hits her, the roasting stench of the bonfires enough to make her gag as a tempest of screams rings out through the air.
"What is going on?" She demands, a little late but better than never. To be fair, she is exhausted and weary and likely quite traumatised by this point. Hours and hours of fighting a never-ending rotting sea filled with teeth and bone has steadily eaten away at her energy and she has never trained for a situation like this. Has never even dreamed of finding herself in such a position.
"You can rest soon," Melisandre says soothingly, once more appearing to pluck the thoughts from Sansa's mind, as if through sorcery.
Her words are not at all comforting.
"What is going on!" Sansa repeats, a demand this time, not a question. She draws herself tall, cloaking herself in the authority of her birth-right, of a line of Kings eight-thousand years long, standing in their ancestral seat of power, and stares the Red Priestess down. Melisandre looks as if she is about to argue, then she meets Sansa's gaze and thinks the better of it, stepping back as she releases her grip on Sansa's wrist, her chin falling slightly in deference owed.
"The battle being fought is pointless," Melisandre tells her. "For eight thousand years, men, women and children have been dying– the armies of the dead will never falter, never tire, and they will never run out of soldiers. There is only one enemy that matters– the Night King. It is his magic that keeps the dead fighting. Once he is defeated, the wights will fall and Dawn will break."
"I know that," Sansa snaps impatiently, "we all know that– it's why the trap was set in the godswood."
"If the trap had worked, the battle would be won," Melisandre says simply. Sansa doesn't say anything in reply, because the truth in Melisandre's words is obvious to her. She just isn't responding to it, because the thought of losing even the shade that Bran has become is too painful.
"What are we doing, then?" She asks instead.
"All hope is not lost," Melisandre tells her, glancing back at Sansa. Her eyes are gleaming with dancing flames again and Sansa holds back a shudder. "The champions still fight."
"And what am I supposed to do? There is nothing I can do to help in a fight," Sansa says, not shying away from the truth. "I'll only get them killed trying to protect me."
"There is one thing you can do," Melisandre tells her, lifting a hand to the handle of the sword strapped to her back. "Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes," she murmurs, before fixing her gaze back on Sansa. "The blood of Kings is most powerful– and you, Sansa Stark, are of Brandon Stark's line, the blood of the Kings of Winter."
A terrible chill settles over Sansa, catches her breath in her throat.
"I don't understand," she whispers.
It is a lie.
Melisandre knows it is a lie.
What are you willing to sacrifice, Child of Brandon's Line?
Anything.
Everything
They reach the godswood in silence. Sansa is glad Melisandre does not try to talk to her. She feels numb. She doubts she could say anything, even if she wanted to.
There were so many days that she expected to die, so many days that she wanted to. She had never truly expected to survive the Long Night anyway.
But this wasn't how she was expecting to go.
Jon and Arya are in the godswood of course. So is Sandor, Brienne and Jaime Lannister, the Free Folk man Jon had called Tormund, and Daenerys Targaryen.
And, of course, the Night King.
He is an otherworldly being; strange, beautiful and so terribly cruel, with blue eyes brighter and hungrier than the dead hearts of stars. He is flanked by three white walkers, armed and armoured in jagged ice, fighting some of the best fighters in the Seven Kingdoms and making it look easy. Sansa is terrified to even be near him.
He is the only one to notice them– the only one, Sansa thinks, who can see through whatever sorcery Melisandre and her god are using to hide them. The Night King turns slowly, and in his endless bright-star eyes Sansa sees an eternity of cold and death and darkness; songs crescendo in her ears, a symphony of bloodlust and battle and screams as she sees the promise of an end of all things.
(Even stars burn out)
"Do it," Sansa tells Melisandre, because she is terrified, she is t e r r i f i e d, and there is comprehension in that face, carved from ice, in those eyes of bright and burning blue stars; her lungs burn, frost creeps over her skin, burning her flesh with its icy touch, and she knows that the Night King knows what they are planning.
Melisandre draws the sword from its sheathe as Sansa lowers herself gracefully to her knees in the snow. She can't help her shudder; she has always hated the sound of steel, has feared it, on a deep, primal level, since her father killed Lady.
How fitting, that she too will die of steel.
Some part of her, she thinks, always knew that she must. That her fate was always bound to Lady's.
Sansa's hair is whipping back and forth as if in a furious gale, but there is no wind in the godswood clearing before the Heart Tree. Everything around her feels frozen but for Melisandre before her, sword held in her two grasped hands, and the Night King across from them. In the sky above the clearing of the Heart Tree, trails of fire bathe them all in bloodied light.
Sansa can feel power building around her as Melisandre lifts the blade. It feels like the air before a storm. It presses against her skin as the point of the steel kisses the skin above her heart. Her breath mists before her face and then the Night King moves, a spear of ice flying through the clearing to shear through Melisandre's own heart, spraying Sansa's face with blood. Sansa is too frozen with shock to move.
The silence breaks then, the veil hiding her and Melisandre from all eyes but the Night King falling– or likely torn– away, and suddenly Sansa can hear voices crying out her name. Melisandre doesn't even flinch, flames melting away the ice spear, leaving nothing but pale, whole flesh where a bloody, gaping wound should be. The Red Priestess doesn't even sway on her feet, her grip on the sword not once faltering.
Sansa wants to close her eyes as the cries of her name increase in volume, wants to take the coward's way out. Instead, she forces herself to look, forces herself to meet each of their eyes; Jon, Arya, Sandor, Brienne, Jaime, Tormund, even Daenerys. The Seven Champions of the Dawn.
Melisandre shouts something foreign to Sansa's ears and then the world turns bright and raw and savage as the blade lights up into a brilliant white, almost blinding, as it sinks into her breast and the agony hits, harsh and unreal and overwhelming. Sansa doesn't even have the breath to scream; she lets out a final gurgling breath that is ragged, blood-soaked but alive and real, and then her world turns to flames so hot they eat outward from the blinding-white steel embedded in her flesh, setting her entire body alight.
She cannot scream. The pain is too much, leaving nothing but suffering. She is unable to move from her bowed position on her knees, the agony indescribable as she watches with blurred, rapidly fading vision, hardly able to concentrate on her last half-coherent thought as Melisandre draws the now-flaming blade from her breast before she mercifully blacks out and knows no more, dying in ice and fire.
(It is Sandor who pulls the flaming sword from Melisandre with a roar of pure, anguished rage.
It is Sandor who charges at the Night King and takes the monster's head.
It is Sandor who ensures that his little bird's sacrifice is not in vain)
::
Here is what Melisandre and her foreign god do not account for, when the Red Priestess sacrifices the Queen of Winter, Daughter of Brandon the Builder's Line, to R'hllor: Sansa dies in a Godswood, her blood spilling on the roots of a Heart Tree.
Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell, in her ancestral home, and the Old Gods are angry that R'hllor dares try and claim one of Theirs.
They claim Sansa's soul as Their own by Right before R'hllor can, yet her body is nothing but ash, tainted by the Lord of Light. There is nothing to tether her in this world.
But They are gods and They are not bound to This world. For her Sacrifice, and to spite R'hllor, They will breathe new life into Sansa Stark.
She will live once more.
::
For a span of time that lasts a second and an eternity, a soul slips beyond the realm that anchors its world, to a place beyond life and stars. Winding branches reach into the heavens, burrowing roots extend far into the underworlds. Realms and reality cling like clusters of leaves to pale bark.
It is a place unknowable, divine; it is everything and nothing, chaotic and orderly, light and dark, an intricate eternity spun between the quivering branches of a tree; every king and peasant, every creator and destroyer, every saint and sinner, all are equal and worthless, little more than a mote of dust on a fluttering leaf.
And yet– each soul is so unique, so infinitely complex, a fragile treasure.
The soul of Sansa Stark is held in the crucible of the World Tree for nine long nights, cradled and nursed by the Old Gods, until the price has been paid and it is time.
::
Warmth.
Peace.
Pressure.
Cold.
"Let's call her Violet– Violet Evans."
::