Love Me Softly

7

Her sister wants to kill the queen.

Sansa just wants her to stay home.

"Please."  Sansa used to beg her for things all the time.  To let her do their hair, to play pretend, to go sit out in the godswood when the weather was nice.  She didn't ever think that was going to have to ask her not to go to war.  "Don't go."

"I have to go."  Arya pauses in the middle of cleaning her sword and the line of her shoulders go tense, but she doesn't look at her.  "You heard me down there.  I just told everyone I was going to kill the queen."

"After the baby was born."  The Queen had wanted to kill it.  So had Sansa, to be smart, even if it made her sick to say it out loud, even if it had made Tyrion curse at her.  Gendry had stopped them.  Started spouting something about loyalty and making enemies and how Lannisters always pay their debts, and the Queen had listened.  Sansa isn't sure when he stopped being so quiet and learned how to use his brain instead of just swinging a hammer.  "That's not going to be for months."

"I want her to know.  That it was me."  Arya has a list.  Sansa had laughed, the first time she heard it, but then she had watched her fight and had her kill Littlefinger and suddenly it wasn't so funny.  "I want her to know that I brought this to her doorstep."

Arya would have killed her even if the queen had said no.  Even if Daenerys demanded her own head in retribution.  Sansa doesn't know if she ever wanted anything that badly, other than to be home.

"You'll be the one to execute her."  It still was strange, to speak like this.  All her life Sansa had thought that she was going to be able to wear her beauty like armor, and with that, she would never have to make hard decisions, never have to talk about executions and sparing babes.  Her mother had always said that life was hard for ugly women.  She forgot to mention that life is hard regardless.  "I don't see how she could possibly misunderstand the message."

"She doesn't know I have to wait."  Arya was a terrible thing, as much as good people can be terrible.  It takes a terrible thing to do the things she has done.  Sansa is grateful that one of them has the stomach for it.  "I want her on her knees, and begging, I want her to be afraid the way she made you afraid.  Don't you remember?"  Her face is twisted, and her hands, when they reach out to grab onto Sansa's, are ice cold, like she had just had them buried in the snow.  None of the people who went out to fight the white walkers seem able to get warm.  It's Sansa's fault that that group includes her sister.  "You asked for mercy and they gave you our father's head.  You said you would be good and they married you to the Imp.  I ran away and she sent her men after me like I was a dog.  Remember that and tell me she doesn't deserve to be afraid."

"We were at war," Sansa tries, because something in her wants to defend Cersei, even now.  There are people who do terrible things because they are terrible, and there are people who do terrible things because they have people they needed to protect.  And all of that, everything she did to Sansa or her family, was to protect her own children.  Even now, she is just trying to protect her children. 

"We were children."  Arya doesn't seem to think that makes a very good excuse.  "How unfortunate for the rest of them, that children grow up."

Some of them.  Not all of them.

Not her brothers.

Not Joffrey. Not Tommen. Not Myrcella.

"They don't need you in the south," Sansa says, because she needs her sister here.  Needs her to be home.  "Not like I need you."

"You don't need me,"

"I do,"

"You don't.  You don't need anyone."  Arya smiles and it looks real.  "It was the best thing you could have done for yourself."