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There would be no bedding, Sansa said, and she meant it.
She allowed for a celebration, of course. A rousing party to commemorate her wedding was expected, however strange in nature the wedding itself was, with a full feast and overflowing cups. The cooks at Winterfell have been working for days to prepare. And there is plenty of ale and Arbor Gold to sweeten the glares sent at her husband, sitting statue-like at her side, no crown atop his silver-gold hair.
Jaime Lannister still looks like a fairytale prince, if one does not look closely enough to see the lines bracketing his face, or the scars. He looks like a prince, but he doesn’t look Northern, and every lord and lordling in the room knows it.
“Are you cold,” Sansa inquires. “Or would you prefer some more wine?”
“How could I be cold, when given such a fine cloak?” Stark colors, the Stark wolves embroidered along the neckline and hem by her own hands. It would be a fine wedding gift for almost anyone else but it looks awkward on him, even though it fits perfectly.
He’s sardonic—she knew that once, when she was in King’s Landing. She managed to forget.
“Of course, ser,” Sansa says, the title a reflex, and wraps her own chilly fingers around the stem of her wine glass. One of the serving girls, overly attentive, pours them both more to drink. She takes a sip in lieu of saying anything else.
They married out of necessity. He barely escaped King’s Landing with his life, but he has plenty of gold courtesy of his brother and no desire to rule his lands, or even to return to Casterly Rock. She has a queendom, a title. The North will need money to aid in their recovery. And she will need an heir.
There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. She’d thought he meant it as a jest, before she understood he meant it as an offer. Still, she hopes the child they are to concieve will favor her father, or Arya, or Jon. She takes a long sip.
She had other options, of course. Many families had remained true to the Starks, and many families still had sons left, even after years of war. They pushed proposals at her once she was crowned, but it was politically tricky, a balancing act she’d never considered when she was a child dreaming of marrying for love. She didn’t want to show unearned favor or create feuds. Jaime might not be the best of the bunch, but everyone is, at least, equally unhappy. She hopes it will change when his gold is in their coffers, and perhaps further when any children they have are not Lannisters but Starks.
So they wed. It was not a long engagement. Jaime spent his time in the training courts with their decimated forces while Sansa met with advisors and read through accounts, trying to count how many days there might be until spring. She didn’t much want to plan a wedding and he had no interest in it either, but her title meant they couldn’t make haste and swear their vows in front of the heart tree once she accepted his proposal.
And yet felt like no time at all until they were standing in the godswood and he took her cloak, no longer a Lannister and not quite a Stark.
It is a fine party. She knows she looks beautiful, sitting at the head table, fiery hair cascading down her back with a gold circlet atop her head. It’s a party befitting a queen. There’s music and dancing as the candles grow low - Sansa catches Tormund dancing with little Lyanna Mormont, spinning her in mad circles around the dance floor. He came down as a representative of the free folk, ate half a deer’s worth of venison, and cheered her in a bawdy toast she was otherwise grateful for, given the shifting mood in the room. There was nothing but stiff best wishes from Jon in a letter Tormund had with him, and nothing from Arya, but she hadn’t expected that anyway.
Tyrion sent a letter, Sansa knows. She saw his wax seal amongst a score of other correspondence. Jaime hasn’t opened it yet.
Sansa stands. “I think,” she says. “Perhaps—“
She doesn’t want to say it, that Jaime should follow her to her chambers before anyone gets ideas into their head. But he knows what she means. It is a small mercy.
“Yes,” he says.
“I don’t want too much fuss,” Sansa murmurs.
“As ever, your wish is my command.”
She frowns at him, not sure of the remark, but Tormund is starting up some new song that sounds bawdy and riotous. This is their chance, Sansa thinks, and they manage to slip out of the hall.
Winterfell is no longer the cold, lonely place it was under the Boltons, or the stage of a battle as it was during the fight against the Night King. It is nothing like the castle of her childhood either, but repairs are in progress, and when she looks around she sees patched holes and new growth.
“I expect this is much less fine than Casterly Rock,” Sansa says. Jaime is a half-step behind her, following her down an empty corridor. The torches are burning low in their holders.
She feels, rather than hears, his shrug. “I doubt I’m ever to return there,” he says. “Don’t know what Tyrion’s done to the place. For all I know he’s turned it into his personal whorehouse.”
Sansa doubts that, given Tyrion’s newly-undertaken responsibilities to the realm, but she doesn’t reply. They’re in front of the door to her chambers soon enough, and she pushes it open, feels rather than hears Jaime follow her in.
They’re plain, she knows, but they’re warm. She supposed she should have a grander bedchamber, but she cannot bring herself to move into the room that used to belong to her parents, Besides, her solar is well enough, and that’s where she receives visitors anyway. The only people who routinely come in here are her maids.
And now her husband, she supposes.
Jaime clears his throat. “Well,” he says.
Sansa is struck by the urge to tell him he doesn’t have to, he can go, but they are married now, with all it entails. She knew when she asked him how this would go and she rather thinks they have no choice, when it comes down to it.
Is she supposed to say something? Anything she could think of sounds ridiculous, or young, nothing fitting for a queen to say to her husband on their wedding night. She looks at Jaime Lannister. wearing his Stark cloak in Stark colors, and almost wants to laugh. Maybe it isn’t funny. Maybe it’s cruel irony, a godly joke. This husband in exchange for her throne. A Lannister in exchange for peaceful rule. He’s hers for the rest of his life, and she is his.
Sansa should reach out to him. She doesn’t know how to start. Jaime is looking at her assessingly, like she is an opponent on the field and not his wife.
“Do you need me to kiss you?” he asks.
It could be a mockery, she thinks. She hardly needs a kiss for them to consummate their match.
“I don’t need you to,” Sansa says.
He exhales, more a sigh than a breath, and leans and presses his lips to hers.
Jaime is taller than her, but not by very much; she rises up on her toes to meet him. It is not a chaste kiss. He knows what he’s doing. His mouth covers hers, and his good hand comes up to wrap around her waist; he supports her with his forearm around her back. She is hesitant at first when she kisses him back but she doesn’t mean to be, and before long the kiss is deeper, harder than she expected it to be. So this is how they get started, Sansa thinks. She sighs when they break apart, expecting the tiny smirk playing around the corner of Jaime’s mouth.
“You don’t need it?” he asks.
“Shut up,” Sansa says without thinking, and is rewarded with a laugh and another breathless kiss, her toes curling in her slippers. This time his teeth scrape against her mouth, and then he sucks her bottom lip into his mouth, catching it between his teeth. She feels it in her breasts, her stomach, coming to a point between her legs.
She keeps kissing him, wondering if she should have expected this.
But there is some hesitation. The scars on her back—she is not ashamed of them anymore, but she had planned to keep her shift on, pull it up around her hips and close her eyes when she thought about this night, which wasn’t often. She planned for this to be efficient. Quick. But Jaime is looking at all of her, and some of the scars are raised, and he touches them when he trails his hand down the back of her neck, under the neckline of her dress.
“Joffrey,” Sansa says unflinchingly. “The Kingsguard. And then Ramsay.” Ramsay, not satisfied with Joffrey’s work, determined to mar her for himself. At the time she thought he might have been jealous. Now she only thinks of the way he looked when he realized he was going to die.
“I heard what you did to him,” Jaime says. He tugs at fabric, exposing her bare shoulder. “You fed him to his own dogs.”
“Yes,” Sansa says. She is not surprised he approves, but she is surprised she cares. “He screamed when he died.”
“As he deserved,” Jaime says, and then his mouth is on the scar, lips tracing the ridges of her skin. It brings with it a curious heat—she hadn’t thought—
Jaime tugs further at her shift. “Take this off,” he says, and Sansa obeys without thinking, pulling it over her head and tossing it to the side of the bed. She’s warm low in her belly, different from the warmth brought on by the wine. It takes a minute for her to realize she is standing naked in front of him and he is still in shirtsleeves and breeches.
“This hardly seems fair,” Sansa says.
“I suppose not,” Jaime says. He manages to pull his shirt off with one hand, and unlace his breeches as well, the motions well-practiced. He’s still well-built—she can’t help but notice, a broad chest tapering to narrow hips, and she looks down at where his cock is jutting out between his legs, hard and red at the tip. He takes a step forward and Sansa moves up against the pillows, making space for him on the mattress. The throb between her legs is an ache now. She wants to press her hand against herself, but she knows whatever relief it might bring will pale in comparison with what she really wants.
Jaime gets onto the bed, and there’s a moment where she thinks he’s going to say they don’t have to, or they can wait; she sees hesitation in his eyes and she wonders if he’s thinking of her or if he’s somewhere far away. But they can’t wait, and now he is her husband, the whole point of this is to get a baby on her—
“Please,” Sansa says, soft, her need on display for him to see, and she sees his eyes darken, sees the moment this decision is made.
He presses into her, slower than she thought he’d be and exactly as hard as she needs, and Sansa clenches around him, surprised to find herself ache. They are truly husband and wife now, bound together by vows in front of the heart tree and the gods and by their own bodies as well. She grabs at his shoulder to steady herself, seeking leverage so she can meet his thrusts. It’s slow, almost careful, and she needs it to be faster. Her nails bite down into his shoulder and he swears before capturing her mouth with his.
Jaime is braced with his good arm, and she tangles her hand in his hair as he kisses her, biting back at him, urging him on. Something seems to have broken inside her, the part of her that was allowed to want things other than her country and her throne, cracked open and ready to take everything he can give her. He’s fucking her hard, and it’s everything and it isn’t enough. She needs something more and she doesn’t even know how to ask for it.
Sansa wraps his legs around it and takes it as his hips snap into her, moaning loud enough she’s sure anyone walking by in the hallway will be able to hear her. His movements become less smooth as he gets closer, and soon enough Jaime is spending inside her, thick and hot. She feels bereft when he pulls out, sticky between her legs, and still like something is missing.
“Spread your legs,” he says, and she’s so startled by the ask that she obeys without question. “A little wider.”
He starts stroking her, fingers working in tight circles, and she gets impossibly wetter under his hand. He dips two fingers inside her and she gasps, clenching down around him, realizing he must be able to feel his seed inside of her when he touches her.
“Let me,” Jaime murmurs, and Sansa closes her eyes and lets him touch her until she is peaking too, teeth digging into her own lip as she tries to muffle her cries.
She is boneless against the sheets as she coker’s back to herself, and when she does Jaime is waiting for her, watching her, though he doesn’t look much more composed himself.
“These are your chambers,” Jaime says. He’s sitting, the sheets pooled around his waist, a fine sheen of sweat on his chest. Sansa is sore and sticky between her legs. Her mouth feels scraped raw. Did she really clutch him to her, and let him sink his teeth into her lower lip? It feels like it was another girl who did so but it must have been her.
Sansa blinks at him confusedly. Her entire body still feels hot.
Jaime sighs. “I can go,” he says. “There are rooms for me down the hall.”
“Oh.” She touches her tongue to the sore spot on her lip. Every night since she was crowned, she’s slept here behind a locked door, alone under her furs. It seems uncouth somehow to make Jaime walk outside, past whatever servants are undoubtedly lingering near the door scrounging for gossip. “No, it’s fine. It’s cold out.”
“In the hallway?”
“It’s fine,” Sansa says again. She wonders if she’s meant to call for a maid and have them dress her in a nightgown. Maybe if Jaime left she would call for a bath. “Anything else can wait until morning.”
He hums, but settles back into the bed. It must be different for him, furs instead of silks. She wants to ask but she’s worried about the answer.
“It went well,” Jaime says. “The wedding.”
The bedding, Sansa thinks wildly, swallows the words back into her throat. “Yes,” she says. “I thought the feast was well-received.”
“You mean you got your lords too drunk to argue with anyone but themselves about your choice of husband,” Jaime says. He nods at her. “That’s a sign of a wise queen if ever I saw one.”
“They’ll settle down,” Sansa says. They’re lying close enough to touch, and she wonders if she should bridge the final inches of the gap between them. He looks warm enough in the furs, anyway. He doesn’t need her lying on top of him. She rolls her head on her neck, working out some of the strains. Her hair must be a dreadful mess—she can feel where it’s tangled and pulling at her scalp—but that’s a problem for her ladies to fuss over in the morning. The fire is banked, and Sansa finds herself growing tired, anyway. It’s very late at night or perhaps very early in the morning, and she allows herself to slip into sleep, her husband’s breathing evening out next to her and turning into quiet snores. She doesn’t dream.
She wakes up very warm, Jaime pressed against her back, his arm slung over her waist. She can feel his cock at the small of her back and would—should—shift away, but there’s a commensurate heat between her own thighs, thinking how he was inside her last night, how it felt when she climaxes around him, the shocked, wanton look in his eyes.
“G’morning,” Jaime murmurs, his grip on her tightening. She thinks he must be mostly asleep, not sure who is lying next to him in bed, and tries to turn in his arms. But all that achieves is rumpled bedclothes and her facing him. It would be so easy for him to slip inside, to finish what they started last night—
“Sansa?” Jaime says, and she pulls at him until he’s half on top of her, letting her legs fall open, not knowing why she needs this so badly. Her husband.
“Yes,” she says. “Please—” and reaches down and feels him, hot against her hand. Jaime chokes on his own breath and then in a heartbeat he’s inside her, filling her up, and she’s so slick that it’s easy as soon as he starts to move. Maybe it’s her or maybe it’s his spend from last night easing the way; either way, Sansa wraps her legs around his waist and arches up to meet him. He’s braced on his good arm, chest pressed to hers, damp with sweat. She’s taking huge ragged breaths and each time it makes her breasts brush up against him, sending tiny shivers through her body, down her spine.
Sansa kisses him without thinking about it, threads her hand through his fine golden hair and pulls his head down, fits her mouth to his. Her lips smear around the corner of his jaw and then he angles his head and she’s gasping into his mouth, a kiss and shared breath, her and Jaime. Her and Jaime . His hips snap–it feels like he’s deep inside her and she doesn’t know if she wants to stay like this with him of all men but she doesn’t want it to end, either.
She doesn’t want to wait for him to finish this time, reaches down and touches herself the way she’s always liked, the way he figured out last night, her hand brushing up against his belly as he fucks into her again and again. This time she comes before he does, trembling under her fingers and around his cock, and it makes him swear against her lips, an oath and a benediction. He spills inside her again not much longer after that, then collapses on top of her, panting, and Sansa is surprised to find that she likes the closeness, the two of them coming back to themselves together.
But it cannot last too long, and she is growing cold. “We ought to go break our fast,” Sansa murmurs. “People will want to celebrate.” And to see, she knows. To gossip. She stands, wrapping one of the furs around her, and goes to call for her maid.
They draw a bath for her and dress her; Jaime is taken to his chambers to do the same. From the sidelong glances, she knows news of the bedding will be all over the castle by lunch. Sansa supposes that gossip is to their benefit.
She doesn’t see him for the rest of the day, though one of her maids brings news that he’s back working with the guards, trying to turn remaining younger sons into proper fighters. She has plenty of work to do, anyway, and half the castle is hungover from celebrating into the early hours of the morning.
Dinner is a more intimate affair and several invited guests beg off. Sansa doesn’t mind the smaller table. Nor is she surprised when Jaime presents himself, scrubbed clean of training yard muck. She supposes that must be another benefit of marrying him—he knows how these things work, from King’s Landing, from before, even if she got the sense he was often frustrated with them.
Sansa sits next to Lyanna Mormont and engages the girl in conversation, though Lyanna reminds her of Arya enough for it to ache, when she lets herself think about it. Even Lyanna knows Sansa did not marry for love.
It takes some urging, but Jaime finally talks to Lyanna of battle strategy, paying her attention that Sansa thinks must be rare from the way the lady lights up. They would have met during the battle against the Night King, of course, and it is a pleasant enough way to spend most of the evening.
Jaime follows her out when the meal is done and servants are clearing plates. Sansa takes a deep breath, looking at him. “You should come to my rooms,” she says, finally, and flushes at the ghost of a smirk dancing across his face.
-
He is still a strange and alien creature, her husband. When she listens to petitioners he sits next to her bare-headed, listens and does not speak. He has the right to do so as her husband, her consort; if he spoke, she thinks she would listen to his counsel.
She invites him to meetings of her council as well, and he bears the suspicious glances the northern lords levy at him as well as could be expected. He does not speak there either. Sometimes he nods in agreement, then catches himself and turns back into a statue. Jaime comes alive only in the training yards, helping teach swordsmanship to those who want to learn, or sometimes when they are safely alone.
They dine together privately a few times a week, usually breakfast but sometimes dinner. Sansa finds herself nervous before each meal. It’s silly, she reminds herself. She is queen, and he is her husband, and he’s slept in her bed and seen her wake up, muzzy with sleep, hair loose and tangled down to her waist. Why should it be different when she is fully dressed and seated across from him at a table?
She spends most of their breakfast asking if things are to his liking - his chambers, which he barely stays in; his manservant, who is a nice, unoffensive boy too young to have known Jaime when he visited Winterfell with Robert Baratheon.
“Everything is very fine,” Jaime says.
Sansa takes a bite of porridge. “It’s better than it was before,” she allows. Ramsay Bolton in her home, destroying it from within—it kept her up at night and it broke her heart.
She doesn’t babble, exactly, but she gives him updates on construction, the new glass gardens—things she doesn’t know if he cares about, the physical space surrounding them. It takes a long time before she brings up anything real.
-
One month passes, and then two. Sansa marks the time passing by what she’s missing: she isn’t pregnant yet. Her courses come and she frowns against the disappointment curdling in her chest. The North is rebuilding and looking towards spring. She has given it so much of herself, and she would giveit everything if she could. This is just the final, missing piece.
It isn’t for lack of trying. Jaime may be a statue in public, but in their bedroom he comes alive and she meets him. He fucks her in their bed, a hand wrapped around her wrist; she goes on hands and knees for him and lets him take her from behind. She feels wild and not so very queenly and she thinks he likes it, that it amuses him, everything he can do to her, this side of her no one but him is allowed to see.
They talk after, sometimes. It’s easier to speak with him naked, wrapped only in bedsheets than it is to look at him across a dining table. He makes sly jokes she laughs at, forgetting herself. She’ll talk about her day, or her complaints, before she drifts off to sleep.
Sansa is always surprised to see him there in the morning, but he always stays.
She has an afternoon filled with endless debates about trade, and it’s not boring, but she could scream—everyone is talking past each other and nothing gets done, and meanwhile they’ve got furs and iron sitting in storehouses that could go south for grain and other necessary goods. She takes dinner alone on a tray, needing the silence of her study. Jaime is training some of the guards anyway, and when he comes to her that night he’s freshly bathed, though she thinks she could still smell the tang of sweat and hard work if she pressed her face to his chest and inhaled.
She’s fidgety in her skin, climbs astride him when he gets into bed, pressing their lower halves together. He laughs at her, smiling up at her as he reaches up and cups her breast, squeezing. “Had quite the day, didn’t you?”
“I could have hit myself over the head and it would have been equally as productive,” Sansa says. “Perhaps moreso.”
“Hmm.” Jaime turns his attention to her other breast, circling her nipple with his thumb through the thin fabric of her nightgown before tugging the neckline down. He leans up and closes his mouth around her breast, sucking hard. Sansa hisses, the muscles in her thighs tensing. “Ah,” he says, and repeats it with the other breast, adding in a scrape of teeth against her skin. She thinks she shouldn’t like that, the rough edge, but she does.
“Take this off.” He plucks at her nightgown, and Sansa rolls her eyes, pulling it over her head. She’s naked atop him and he’s in a loose shirt and little else. The clothes don’t matter—she can feel him growing hard underneath her. It would be the easiest thing to sink down on his cock, and she wants to, doesn’t want to let him tease her this time.
So she does. She wraps her hand around him and takes him inside her, sighing at the stretch, the slight burn in her thighs from straddling him. Jaime’s eyes go wide and there’s a thrill in that, too, that she can manage to surprise him. They fuck like that, her atop him, his hand between her legs, massaging circles around her cunt until she comes on his cock, falling forwards to pant into his shoulder while he fucks up into her, spending hot and wet inside her.
Sansa climbs off him when he starts to go soft, stretching out next to him. She’s a little sore, but she feels better than she did an hour ago, and there’s something in that, at least.
“Not what I was expecting,” Jaime says, finally, but his voice is more light than anything else.
“You didn’t seem to mind.” There’s a draft coming in from the door, causing her skin to pebble, but Sansa doesn’t want to move enough to deal with the blankets. She curls into him instead before she can overthink it.
“You’ve certainly settled down,” he says, but he wraps an arm around her. She holds her breath for a moment before she relaxes into it, afraid he might move away, and of course—
“I don’t have to stay,” he says.
“It’s fine.” Sansa knew he would ask. If she sent him away, he would go. All she would have to do is tell him. It’s a terrifying thought to have. “You’re warm.”
“And less disagreeable than most of the people you talked to today, I’m sure.”
“People will settle down once there’s a baby,” she says. “It will soothe all manner of ills.”
“Yes, like your inconvenient Lannister husband.” There’s a ghost of a smirk on Jamie’s face. “What shall we do if the babe comes out a little lion? If he or she has a crown of gold hair and green eyes?”
“I favor my mother,” Sansa says. “So did Robb. It should be fine.”
“You mean you’ll make it fine.”
“That too.” She reaches for her discarded night down and then pulls it over her head, though she’s not sure why she bothers—she strips it off half the time in the middle of the night. Last night, she ended up sleeping bare, kept warm by the circle of his arms. “Or perhaps the Stark look will win out.” Sansa likes the idea of a dark-haired baby, one who looks like Ned Stark, even though she suspects Jaime would rather enjoy a child who resembles him. A little blond lion tearing through Winterfell’s halls. It would be entertaining if there was less at stake.
“Perhaps,” Jaime says.
Sansa doesn’t know what else to say. Perhaps there isn’t anything else to say. As long as there’s a baby, a healthy one, she thinks. “Let’s go to bed,” she tells him, and feels rather than hears his sigh as she closes her eyes. But she wakes up, and he’s still snoring next to her, still stayed.
-
She doesn’t bleed for a month, then two. The first month she touches her hand to her belly and waits, but it’s too early for the babe to quicken, and certainly not too early to lose the pregnancy. She doesn’t say anything, not even when nausea roils her stomach, making it hard for her to eat anything stronger-tasting than porridge. After the second month without her courses, she goes to the maester.
“Congratulations, your majesty,” he says. He gives her tea to settle her stomach and tells her all is well, but she misses Maester Luwin, sharply and suddenly. Her lady mother would not have wanted her to marry Jaime Lannister, let alone have his child, but Sansa misses her as well. Catelyn did this five times over and bore healthy sons and daughters. Her rule grows stronger as Winterfell recovers, as their coffers fill up with badly-needed gold, but Sansa knows how desperately she needs this heir.
She wants her mother’s advice. She wants her mother to hold her and tell her everything will be fine. There is no one left who will wrap Sansa in their arms and tell her reassuring lies that she was made for this, she will be a good mother and it will be an easy birth and she won’t leave her hard-won queendom without a ruler or an heir. She wishes Arya was here, so Arya could laugh at her concerns and dismiss them. Arya wouldn’t be reassuring but she would tell Sansa she’s being stupid to worry. She could use that right now too.
The gardens are empty enough this time of day, and Sansa goes for a walk in them, pacing circles on freshly-turned dirt paths until her head is somewhat settled, if not her stomach. She looks down and tries again to see something, or feel something, but it’s just the gentle drape of fabric from her waistband, and her own sensible shoes poking out from below the hem of the dress. She supposes she should appreciate being able to see her feet while she can.
She waits until the sun is hanging low in the sky before she goes back in. She’ll tell Jaime tonight after they go to bed, she decides. It is too early for the entire castle to hear the news.
-
“There will be a baby,” Sansa says. “The maester says seven moons. Maybe less.” Her stomach is still flat enough, but she yearns to take Jaime’s hand and place it there. She wraps her fist in the sheets instead.
“Are you certain?” Jaime asks.
“It’s early,” Sansa tells him. “I would wait before we write to your brother, or mine. But he was sure.”
She is painfully worried something will happen, either to her or the baby, has vague memories of the miscarriage her mother had between Bran and Rickon. Even that had been different—her mother had bore four healthy children by then.
Jaime looks like he is about to say something, then stops himself. “How long to wait?” he asks.
“Not too much longer, I think,” Sansa says. “Sooner or later I will begin to show and then we couldn’t hide it even if we wanted to.” She takes a breath. “Here,” she says, and takes his hand, pressing it against her stomach. “I can’t feel anything yet, the maester says I will know when it quickens, but—“
He takes a deep breath, and doesn’t move his hand.
-
Jaime is careful with her, solicitous. He tucks her arm against his when they walk to break their fast most mornings, the movement easy, and she wonders if it’s for the benefit of her people—playing the part of husband they want to see, the steady consort to their winter queen. Nevertheless, she doesn’t mind his steadying weight at her side.
She is sick in the mornings with mother’s stomach, but otherwise feels well enough. Her belly grows, though she is able to hide it under her dresses for several weeks until the maester assures her she is less likely to lose the babe. As she had predicted it to be, the news is mostly well-met at court, with perhaps the exception of a small few who she knows were hoping she’d cast aside her husband and then one of them might step in. But they were nothing more than grumblers, not dangerous, and even they feign cheer for an acceptable amount of time.
There is much drinking and toasting to the new Stark, that night. She lets it happen, even though that, too, hurts her—that she is the only Stark in the room by blood, and none of her siblings or parents are here to celebrate with her. Her joy should not be tempered with melancholy, and yet she doesn’t know how to fix it, or if she even can.
Sansa supposes soon there will be two of them. She hopes it will help.
Jaime doesn’t ask now when he comes to bed, just leaves when she does, following her out and down the hall. Sansa is grateful for it, though she can’t voice why—it isn’t like she’s going to be attacked in the night. Perhaps it’s simply enough to have another warm body next to her in bed, so that when she wakes in the middle of the night she can listen to his deep, even breathes until she herself falls back asleep.
He was hesitant about fucking her, but she craved it, and he has moved onto being overly careful instead. It’s hard for her to mind too much, though she thinks back to that first week after they were wed, the bizarre urgency they both felt. She misses it.
“I wonder if they’re hoping for a boy,” Sansa says. It is early morning, judging from the weak grey light outside the window. She meant to sleep longer but woke up, uncomfortable, and her tossing and turning woke Jaime up as well.
“They?”
“Everyone.” Sansa shifts, restless. She isn’t so big to be uncomfortable, but she feels like she’s floating outside her body sometimes, ungainly and expanding. “A Stark boy—probably named for my father—“
“Begging your pardon, your grace, but I didn’t much like your father.” Jaime’s voice is dry. “I would not have called us bosom friends. Not that I’m suggesting we name him after mine either.”
“There are plenty of other names,” Sansa says, forgetting herself, trying to jam a retaliatory elbow into his ribs. He dodges it easily, then catches her, holding her in place with one warm hand.
“Tywin Stark,” Jaime says. “Imagine that. His namesake is rolling in his grave.”
“Plenty of other family names,” Sansa says, and pretends not to notice the quiet way Jaime breathes out. She forced herself to continue unabashed. “Perhaps not after my Uncle Benjen, considering his disappearance. I like Brynden but that was my great-uncle on my mother’s side. There’s Torrhen and Willam, of course—“
“Northern names,” Jaime says. “Aye.” A pause, and then he says, “And the babe might yet be a girl, you know. You’re planning for Torrhen or Willam and out comes a little Arya.”
“We aren’t naming any children after my sister,” Sansa informs him. “If she found out, she’d be insufferable.” There are plenty of Northern girls names she likes, too; she doesn’t have to name the baby Lyanna. Lyanna Mormont wears the name well enough and Sansa thinks she might prefer something older, a name with less recent history behind it. “Either way, it will be a boy. I know it.”
“Perhaps if you wish hard enough, I’ve heard that works,” Jaime says. “I will think on it.”
-
Sansa wonders when Jaime will speak of his other children. All three of them dead, one after the other; she thinks none of them knew he was their true father. She will never mourn Joffrey, but Joffrey was a creation more of Cersei, she thinks—she hopes—and neither Tommen nor Myrcella deserved the fates that befell them.
In some ways this is a new experience for both of them. Even though the baby will have her name, he or she will know their father and name him thusly. But she can’t work up the courage to ask him, and she doesn’t want to know if he thinks about Cersei’s pregnancies when he looks at her.
He saves her from bringing it up by speaking of it himself. They are walking slowly in the gardens; Sansa needed some air and everyone is loath to let her go anywhere by herself as she advances in the pregnancy.
“It will not be my first child,” Jaime says. “I know—that you know that. That you are aware of it.”
She is. She was.
“I am not sorry about Joffrey,” Sansa says. “But Tommen and Myrcella—yes.” She heard, after, how Myrcella died in his arms. “I am sorry for their deaths.”
“Not that I ever did anything more than picture it,” he continues. There’s bitterness in his voice. “Being a father. If things were different.”
Sansa is struck by how she wants to reassure him. Kind words that this child will know his father, that Jaime can teach him the sword and bring him into the woods to hunt, that he will be Jaime’s son too even if the baby looks every inch a Stark. She doesn’t know where the urge comes from. It is a new feeling to her.
“I’m sorry,” she says again instead. The babe kicks at her and she shifts, uncomfortable. “I—look, he is moving, I think you can feel it.” She grabs Jaime’s hand and presses it to her belly.
It is not an elegant way to end the conversation, but it is a needed one. Sansa knows the ghosts of Cersei and their children haunt Jaime, the same way her siblings and Ramsay and Petyr will always haunt her. She supposed that is just the way of things. But it is better to keep moving forward.
“Can you feel him?” she asks.
Jaime nods. “Yes,” he says. “I can.”
-
Now that she is pregnant she wants him all the time, a strange craving she did not expect to have. Perhaps it would be proper for Jaime to go to his rooms down the hall from hers, put stone walls and locked doors in between them. Sansa knows the servants are talking every time he wakes up next to her. They are not a love match like her mother and father, and for all she needs him, she doesn’t think she loves him. But she wants him with her. She sits on the edge of their bed with her legs splayed as wide as she can get them and he licks her cunt until she comes on his tongue, sliding three fingers deep inside her so she can clench down on his hand.
He makes like he is going to leave, after, wiping his mouth and standing. Sansa flushes red, thinking about how she must look—her hair in disarray and the very core of her on display. Jaime is still wearing his shirt. She can see that he’s tenting his breeches. There is no elegant way for her to get up the bed but she does her best, yanking at the linen of his shirt.
There’s a flash of amusement in his eyes. Let him tease her, she decides. He was the one on his knees.
“Alright, wife,” Jaime says, and divests himself of his breeches. Sansa flops over onto hands and knees, lets him pull her up. She sighs when he enters her, head dropping to rest on her forearms. She is certain it should not feel this good, for him to fuck her like this, but she doesn’t quite care, either. On her hands and knees he can touch her the way she likes. She thinks her cunt must already be swollen from his mouth, she’s so sensitive, and it doesn’t take much for her to come on his fingers and cock, trying and failing to stifle her moans.
-
Jon visits when Sansa is so huge she cannot walk through the keep, only waddle. She half-suspects Tormund made him, but she is grateful to Tormund if so, and gladder still that Jon is finally at Winterfell.
“You look well,” he says, looking her up and down, his eyes lingering on her swollen belly. “It must be soon now.”
“A matter of weeks, if not days,” Sansa says. She is uncomfortable down to her bones. She wants the baby out, and not just because she is curious who the child will favor. “Jon--”
He also looks well. The haunted look in his eyes is lessening, replaced by something freer. Not humor, really, but a spark she hadn’t realized was missing. His hair is long and curling against his shoulders and he’s let his beard get a bit scraggly, but he doesn’t look like he’s a dead man made alive anymore. Whatever he’s been up to with Tormund, it’s been good for him, as much as she wishes he could stay at Winterfell with her. She yearns for her mother as the birthing gets closer, but having even one member of her family would help.
“I still can’t believe you married the Kingslayer,” Jon says. They’re sitting in her solar. She would have liked to walk the walls with him, but it would be so slow-going as to be unbearable. These days she doesn’t so much walk as she does waddle from place to place, trailing anxious chambermaids behind her like ducklings.
“I had my reasons,” Sansa says. She smiles. “I would not say they were good.”
“But understandable.” Jon looks out towards the window, where weak sunlight is filtering past the shutters. “You had other proposals.”
“Mostly younger sons,” Sansa says. “The youngest Umber, for instance—I’m sure he’s pleasant enough, but it would have been seen as favoritism to their house, and nothing they could bring would have outweighed that. Same for the Manderlys, though I did give that more thought before declining. I was not marrying anyone from the Vale, not after Petyr. At least Jaime has gold.” It seems harsh, balancing out her marriage in such plain words, but she doesn’t know how to tell Jon that Jaime makes her laugh, and has never said a word when she wakes up shaking from a nightmare.
“Aye.” Jon sighs. “Tormund’s got a whole host of trading offers for you tomorrow, given Lannister’s contributions to the northern treasury.”
“We’ll be delighted to listen,” Sansa says. “Really, Jon—you don’t need trade proposals to visit, Tormund or no Tormund.” She rubs at her belly. “As long as there is a Stark in Winterfell, you have a home here. And I would very much like the baby to know its uncle.”
“Cousin,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll call you uncle. Someone will need to tell him about Robb and Bran and Rickon, and Father. Arya can tell him her own tales if—when—she comes back, though.” That earns her a smile from him. Sansa considers him further. “You could stay through the birth. I don’t think it’ll be long now.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Jon says.
She rolls her eyes. “So you stay, and Tormund, and the rest of the Free Folk who traveled with you. We’ve plenty of room and it’s been far too quiet around here. Please, Jon.”
“I’ll think about it,” he says, finally. “How are—do you feel alright?”
“Yes,” Sansa says, though the truth of it is she feels inelegant and ungainly. “The maester assures me I am doing well, as is the babe. I was worried.”
“Lady Catelyn,” Jon starts, the words coming reluctantly. Sansa holds up her hand to stop him.
“Not just that,” she says. “Jon, if I die in childbed, I leave the North with no queen and no heir. Unless you’ve heard from Arya?”
He shakes his head.
“I have a will,” she says. “There have been discussions—a fine thing to sit through. They didn’t allow Jaime in the room. None of the lords knew if you’d return to Winterfell if I died.”
“I wouldn’t take it away from you,” Jon says. “I wouldn’t want it, Sansa. You know that.”
“I know,” she says. “It’s the contingencies. That’s the worst part of this. I had to talk about what happens if I die and the baby lives, or if I die and the baby dies, and it was all a matter of strategy.”
It was a good thing they didn’t allow Jaime in on the discussions. She doesn’t want to think about it, making him listen to a cold discussion of what to do if his fourth child passed. She’s had worse discussions since a crown was placed on her head, had to make hard decisions. It is all a part of ruling and in a way she welcomes it, knowing that her people trust her to decide things they may not want to decide themselves. But it still hurts.
“It’s set up so Jaime can’t take the crown,” she says. “Not that he wants it, anyway.” He could wear a circlet, denoting his status as her husband, and she’d asked him once. Are you out of your fucking mind was the response. Sansa was bizarrely relieved to hear it.
“Good,” Jon says. Sansa rolls her eyes, nudging him, but he looks seriously back at her. “No, it is,” he says. “It’s better that he doesn’t want it, and even better that he agreed.”
“I know,” she says. “But I wouldn’t want to leave him with no wife and no babe.”
“Do you—“ Now Jon is looking anywhere but at her, like there is something facsinating about the bare stone walls in his line of vision. “You don’t love him, do you?”
“Oh,” Sansa says, and nearly laughs. “No. I don’t love him, no.” She sometimes thinks it is sneaking up on her like a thief in the night, when it’s late and they are together in their chambers, and she’s talking to him, being honest , because no one else can hear. Because he listens, and tucks away the information and does nothing with it. “But he has been a good husband so far and he doesn’t want my crown for himself. I’m not sure if there’s more I could ask for in a man outside of love. And I wouldn’t want to die on him after all that.”
“Aye,” Jon says. “I suppose I understand that.”
“So you’ll stay?” Sansa asks him, voice bright to sweep away her own visions of herself bleeding out in childbed.
“Aye,” Jon says again. “I’ll stay until the baby’s born, at least.”
“Thank you,” she says, and squeezes his hand.
-
They’re getting ready for bed when Jaime says, “It was an interesting way to spend the afternoon, you know.”
Sansa is brushing out her hair. Usually one of her maids does it, but she doesn’t mind taking on the task herself when the two of them are together. “What’s that?”
“Being threatened by your bastard brother,” Jaime says. “He’s still quite the sullen prick when he wants to be. All that time beyond the Wall hasn’t cooled his sulks.”
Sansa smiles, setting the hairbrush down. “Jon wouldn’t change who he is now,” she says. “I don’t think he could.”
“He warned me not to hurt you,” Jaime says.
“I don’t think you would anyway,” Sansa tells him. The words feel true in her mouth, though she doesn’t know it until she says them aloud.
“I told him that,” Jaime says. “We’ll see if he believes me.”
“He won’t,” Sansa says, frank, and Jaime laughs. “Jon or no Jon, we do need a name,” she continues. She rests her hands back on her belly—it is the most comfortable place for them at this point. “If you don’t like Torrhen still. I don’t see what’s so objectionable about it, and half the old Stark kings otherwise have some variation of Eddard as their name.”
“Aye, no one would accuse you of being a creative lot,” Jaime says. Sansa rolls her eyes at him, and she favors her with a smirk before going on. “No, it’s too Northern,” Jaime says. He sighs. “I think—Brandon is fine, if you’d like. And perhaps it is owed to your brother.”
“Torrhen is too Northern, but Brandon is not?” Sansa laughs. “Brandon is one of the oldest Northern names there is.”
“I still think you might have a girl, and then this conversation is for naught,” he says.
“It is mother’s intuition,” she says, and places her hand on her belly, waiting for him to wrap his fingers around hers. “Brandon. I think he will like it.”
-
She feels odd when she wakes, pressure concentrated down low; she feels pressure and then a gush of release, and short moments later there’s nothing but squeezing pain.
Ah, she thinks, vague: this is what it feels like. Her mother did this five times. Sansa digs her nails into her palm, trying to focus, and that’s when Jaime wakes up.
He immediately looks at her and senses something is wrong. She thought maybe she could make it down to breakfast, but one look at him dissuades her of the notion. “I think the baby is coming,” Sansa says.
Jaime raises a delicate eyebrow. “I agree,” he says. “I’ll send for the maester.”
Everything starts to go faster once the maester, and her ladies, arrive. Jaime is subsequently kicked out of the room—Sansa tells him to let Jon know what’s happening, and she thinks she must look distressed because he agrees without making any kind of smart comment about Jon, just squeezes her hand and tucks a sweaty lock of hair behind her ear, then goes.
One of her maids has birthed six children of her own, all healthy, and she is the one who sits next to Sansa, bringing her cups of water when she starts to yell herself hoarse and wiping her brow with a damp cloth. This should be my mother here, Sansa thinks, but instead it is Darra, who has kind hands and kind eyes and is trying her best even though she cannot be Lady Catelyn.
Sansa almost wants to push her away, but doing so will not bring her mother back, and she needs the comfort right now.
“You’re doing well, my lady,” Darra says. The pains are coming closer together now. Sansa hurls herself deep into the middle of the pain, lets it surround her, lets it flood her. She will go through it and when she comes out the other side she will meet her child.
Pushing is a relief, when it comes. She is squeezing Darra’s hand so hard she fears she will break it, but the lady doesn’t complain, just murmurs encouragement to her. It takes much of her strength, but one great push final and she hears a squalling cry. “It is a boy,” the maester announces, and Sansa reaches for the baby. He is cleaned and wrapped and handed to her, still lustily wailing, and she holds him tight against her chest.
“Please send for my husband,” Sansa says. One of the maids goes, she doesn’t know which, but it takes all of a few seconds for Jaime to be at her side, and she wonders if he was pacing outside the door, listening to her yell.
“Sansa,” he says. His fingers brush against her cheek, a reassuring, gentle touch, and then he reaches for the baby.
“It is a boy.” The babe is quieting, recovering from the shock of being born. There’s plenty of commotion around her, but Sansa ignores it in favor of looking at her son’s face. He is pink, with reddish hair, and when he blinks and opens his eyes they’re light, no particular color but a shade she thinks could turn either to blue or green. Something in his nose favors Jaime, and she sees Robb in the soft square shape of his chin. He will want to nurse soon, she is sure of it, and she is not so queenly that she cannot nurse her own son. But first—
She hands the babe to Jaime, and watches as he carefully settles his son in his arms, eyes fixed on that tiny wizened face. “Thank you,” he says, voice hushed, the words meant for her ears alone, and suddenly she sees them here again as they will be for the next baby, and she cannot imagine anything other than awe in his voice.
“A redhead,” Jaime says.
“But your nose.” Sansa watches him look at their son. For so long she wanted to be a mother, her husband a golden knight in beautiful armor. And now she has the knight and a crown on her head, and she primarily feels a great deal of relief. She is alive and their son is alive. He is squalling angrily at being born, as it happens, though as Jaime starts to rock him he begins to settle. Soon she will need to try and feed him, and soon after that she will need to sleep, but for now, this is enough.
They name the baby Brandon, announcing his name to the castle to great cheers. Sansa does not think she will ever be able to call him Brian—the nickname makes her think of her brother as he used to be, not a distant king in the south but little and chasing after the rest of them.
Brandon, the newest Stark. It will suit him.
-
It is a little better now that there is an heir, with his name Stark and not Lannister as was promised. It helps even more that he clearly has the long face like her brother and father did, even as a chubby babe. Sansa can see it in the way the lords talk to Jaime—they are still wary of him, but their concerns are lessened, and they love Brandon as one of their own.
He doesn’t speak when she is hearing petitioners, but he will discuss them after with her, when she asks for his opinion if she handled something fairly or if she thought she could do better. He still comes to her bed at night. She’s glad of that, glad it didn’t change just because the baby was born.
“You are good at it,” Jaime says.
“Hm?” They are sitting around the fire in her solar, having taken their dinner privately. Sansa shifts Brandon to lie more comfortably in her arms. He is sleeping after feeding, making soft snuffling noises as he dreams. What little hair he has is a true auburn now, and she is glad of it, but his eyes are Jaime’s in color and shape. The long face is all Stark, and it hurts her heart when she looks at her son and sees her brothers reflected back.
“Being queen.” The words seem to come from him reluctantly. “Cersei wasn’t.”
“You don’t have to speak of her if you don’t wish to,” Sansa says, though it pleases her to hear it, a small dark part of her that welcomed news of Cersei Lannister’s death. A part of her that hoped for it.
“That’s all I had to say,” Jaime says. “They talk around me in the training yards now that they’re used to me. They think you are fair. They’re glad the baby is healthy, and that you are queen.”
“Thank you,” Sansa says. She looks down at Brandon for a while—she doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of looking at him: his delicate features, the tiny fingernails on his small hand, curled up in a fist by his face. There’s a question on her mind. She wasn’t sure of asking, but it seems like this is as good a time as any. “Do you want to invite Tyrion to visit?”
“As an emissary?” Jaime asks.
“To meet his nephew. It is a long ways to travel, and perhaps too great an ask, but—“
“You are never going back to King’s Landing,” he surmises. Sansa nods, and Jaime sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I do want to him to come. And I don’t. I don’t know how it would go. For all I know, he’d hit me, and I’d probably deserve it. And he was never one to be that interested in children. But he is the only one left apart from me.
“It doesn’t have to be now,” Sansa says. They sent a raven to the capital with the birth announcement, and Tyrion did write back, expressing both formal congratulations and a note more hastily scrawled in his own hand. She thinks his well-wishes were sincere.
“I’ll think about it,” Jaime says. “Do you want me to hold him?”
“If you don’t mind,” Sansa says, and passes him their son.
She doesn’t love him yet, her golden, southern husband. But she thinks of his face when she told him about the baby, she watches him as he holds Brandon so carefully, every ounce of his attention fixed on Brandon’s face, and she thinks—perhaps someday. Someday she could.
-
Jon’s letters grow less stiff when she gives him news of Brandon. She writes to him how her son favors Robb, how he has one tooth poking through his gum and is upset about it. He writes back regularly, and she manages to extract from him a promise to visit for Brandon’s first nameday. Jaime doesn’t say anything about inviting Tyrion to the celebration. Sansa doesn’t push it. She supposes he will come to it in his own time. The two of them are writing more often, now, though she doesn’t know if she will ever understand the scope of what was broken between them. She only wishes there was a raven that could make its way to Arya, give her news of her nephew and ask if she will ever come home to her sister.
Soon enough Sansa starts thinking about another baby; not for the realm, but because she wants one, wants to give Brandon siblings to chase after in the training yards, a sister who idolizes him like she did Robb, a brother to follow him around and play with. She does not want Brandon to grow up in Winterfell and think of the castle as lonely. Arya is west, Bran is south, and Jon is north. She is the only one left at home.
“What are you thinking,” Jaime asks, when Sansa tentatively mentions it. “An heir and a spare?”
Sansa crosses her arms. “That’s a fine way to put it,” she says, tart. He smirks at her. So he wanted the reaction, then. Fine. She pulls her shift over her head and closes the space in between them. “You told me you wished for a girl.”
“I did,” Jaime says, wrapping his arm against her waist, tugging her close so she’s standing between his legs. “We’ll have to keep trying.” He kisses her, long and slow and deep.
“I suppose we will.”
Their daughter is born a year later, looking up at Sansa with blue eyes as she comes into the world. This time she knows Jaime is outside her chambers with Brandon, pacing up a storm, Brandon trying to follow him on chubby little legs. He holds Brandon up to meet his sister, and Sansa thinks, oh.
There are too many people around to tell him, too much chaos in the aftermath of the birth, but she knows one day soon she will.