Love Me Softly

8

When the armies go to leave, Sansa does not leave the walls of Winterfell to say good bye.  Not to her brother, who has not spoken to her since she sent Arya out beyond the safety of the gates.  Not to Arya, who had slipped out of their rooms before Sansa was asleep, leaving her to dress on her own on their last day together.  Not to the Queen, who would only ask her to kneel once more despite their agreement.

Not even Tyrion.

"What are we going to do now?"  Theon stands beside her, his hand with the missing fingers wrapped over the edge of the ramparts.  He has taken to shadowing her in Brienne's absence, like he was some sort of temporary body guard.  Sansa doesn't mind.  She's glad for the company, particularly from someone who has his own scars that Ramsay leaves behind.  "That it's over?"

She wishes people would stop saying that it was over.  It wasn't over, not when she had the North to rule and inventory to take, and there was a whole other battle taking place down south.

But.

The dead were dead.

That was more than they could say a month ago.

"I'm going to take a long bath."  She presses down on the ache in her ribs and he flinches, a sort of sympathetic pain.  The guilt of it all drives him half mad, sometimes, and in the night she can hear him pacing outside her door.  Sometimes she wrenches it open and tells him to come in if he's going to make that much noise.  Sometimes she leaves him to sleep on the stone.  "And then I'm going to sleep."

The springs run through winterfell, hotter than she should be able to stand.  The servants tell her not to, that it would be scalding, but every day Sansa ignores them, strips off the robe and sinks down into the scalding water, leaving Theon to curse and avert his eyes and stand awkwardly by the doorway, carrying in messages and sending away anyone who might have strayed so far away from their positions.

There are people that say that she is beautiful.

At a certain age, boys and girl will do anything to get a glimpse of a beautiful woman, even when they had just finished a war.

Theon is a spectacular guard dog.

"Are you going to marry him?"  He won't look at her, but he had come closer this time, just enough where he could yank up his pant legs and stick the heels of his feet into the water, yanking them back every time it gets too hot for him to stand.  "The imp."

All her friends call him that.  She used to call him that, and worse names.

"I don't think so."  She lets herself sink down into the heat further.  The measter had been right- the heat eases the ache, makes her skin seem to fit her a bit better, and keeps her from feeling like something in her stomach is wound up tight enough to snap.  When she wakes in the night with the pain spiking, she drags herself down here, just like she had this time.  "I don't think I'm going to marry anyone."

Theon stares at her.  She stares back.

"There are still good men."  His words come out thick, broken.  Sam had done what he could for him, but there was no way to replace the broken teeth, and Theon tends to stutter over his words in the best of moments.  "Not all men are Ramsays."

"No."  Her brother is a good man.  Ser Davos and Tormund had been good men, and gave their lives so others could live.  Greyworm was a good man, and her father.  Tyrion is a good man.  "But I've found that they could be, if given the chance."

They sit in silence, and she closes her eyes, sinks in deeper.  The water would burn her if she stays in much longer, if it suddenly gets much hotter.  She welcomes it.  There is something cleansing about the heat.