Disclaimer: I'm not George R. R. Martin. Like, at all. And I'm just playing around with his characters and world here, and I'm certainly not making any money off of this!

Story Warnings: I rated the story M for violence (including vague references to Sansa's past abuse in King's Landing) and language.

Preliminary Author's Note: I'm not sure how canon-compliant this story is. The ASOIAF canon terrifies me in its enormity, so if something wasn't easily double checked on the wiki, I might have gotten it wrong. I also glossed over some non-SanSan-related political stuff just because it wasn't super important to the story I wanted to tell, so if that sort of thing bugs you, be warned!

I'm always happy to receive reviews, and thanks for reading!

The armor was heavier than she expected, but less binding than the corsets and stays she wore with her formal gowns. It was designed for a man - for a boy, really, her advisor Geoffrey had told her, some squire not yet fully grown - and it sat awkwardly on her frame, mashing her breasts up against her chest and barely fitting over the curve of her hips.

"I don't know if this is going to work," Sansa said, twisting to get comfortable. "Why can't I wear one my gardening dresses? I see no difference -"

"In function, perhaps." Geoffrey gave a short little bow. "But the men are expecting - and forgive my bluntness - a king."

"A king can't wear a dress?" Sansa attempted to smile at him over the top of her shoulder, but the armor made it difficult to move. Geoffrey tittered, then scurried over to the table, where a helmet and sword and scabbard and gloves were laid out in a neat row. Sansa sighed, straightened her shoulders, and tried to quell the quaking in her stomach.

There is nothing to be nervous about, she told herself. It was only one night, after all, to show her support for those men guarding the castle from the cold, and from the Others who prowled in it. The sun had shone for the last week, warming up the countryside; there had been no attacks for nearly a month.

And she doubted her advisors would let her go if there was any suggestion of danger.

Geoffrey returned and draped a cloak over her shoulders. Then he latched the scabbard around her waist. Sansa wrapped her hand around the sword's handle.

"A sword?" she asked. "You do realize I've no idea how to use it."

"Of course, your Grace. It's merely for show."

The sword felt awkward in Sansa's hand, but she pulled it out by a fraction, enough for a strip of blade to appear.

"Black!" she cried. "Oh, Geoffrey, please don't tell me you wasted an obsidian blade for show."

"Of course not, your Grace. We painted it."

"You painted it?" Sansa let out a little choking laugh and scratched at the flat edge of the sword. Black flecks appeared on her fingernail. "That's rather a relief. I was afraid some poor squire was going without protection -" The thought sobered her, and she let the sword fall back into place.

"Yes, we wanted you to appear ready for battle." Geoffrey nodded. "As if you could slay Others at a moment's notice."

"No one in the North thinks I'm capable of slaying monsters."

"That isn't true, your Grace." Geoffrey smiled at her. "Although, admittedly, they don't imagine you doing your slaying literally, out in a battlefield."

Sansa laughed, but it was more out of nervousness than mirth. Geoffrey handed her the helmet, and after she took it from him she stared down at it for a long moment, unmoving. It gleamed in the firelight, although there was a dent at the crown that made her uneasy.

"Go on, your Grace," Geoffrey said. "We should be leaving soon. We want to arrive before nightfall."

"Of course," Sansa said softly, and she nestled the helmet over the web of braids her handmaiden had created that morning.

She wondered if men felt strength when they put on their armor and swords, the way she found strength in the woolen dresses she wore for working in the glass gardens and repairing the castle, or in the beautiful, impractical silk-and-fur gowns she wore when meeting with advisors and diplomats. The concept of equating armor with strength seemed strange to her, foreign - although she could remember a time when the sight of man in armor seemed to her an image of power and righteousness.

She didn't think that anymore.

"Your Grace," Geoffrey said impatiently, tapping his thigh. "I really don't want us to travel after dark."

"I know. I was just thinking."

"Practicing your speech?"

"Something like that." Sansa gave him her brightest smile, the same smile she planned to turn on the men guarding Winterfell from the horrors of the cold. It was a smile to melt ice, and some days, it felt like the only weapon against winter.

The sun was high overhead when they set out from Winterfell in a caravan of sleds pulled by snow-steeds whose antlers were wound with silvery-blue flowers from the glass gardens. Flowers dripped off the sides of the sleds as well, shedding petals across the snow as they sped north through the spindly woods.

Sansa sat as properly as she could in her bulky, unfamiliar armor. The sky was cloudless and a bright, pristine blue, the sun a disc of white heat that refracted off the metal of the armor and sparkled in the icicles hanging from the tree branches. Light danced everywhere. The world looked carved out of glass. Sansa had not been this far from the castle for nearly two years. It wasn't exactly safe inside its walls, Sansa knew that, but it was safer than the frozen open, and she had forgotten how beautiful the frozen open could be.

The wind rushing past the sleds rendered conversation impossible, and so in that roaring silence Sansa practiced what she meant to say to the men at the outpost. Aside from the sworn brothers, most of them were not bannermen, but wildlings with whom she had struck an accord when she reclaimed the land and her crown: in exchange for food and shelter, they provided protection from the Others.

It was no longer enough to depend on the services of the brave men at the Wall.

After the attack on Winterfell two years ago, the one that had claimed her husband and her child both, the one whose horrors had been profound enough to replace her adolescent nightmares, she had sent word south, to the new queen, and begged for an alliance - and for reinforcements. They had only arrived in the last few months, trickling up in starving, shivering bands. Sworn brothers, mostly, defenders of the Faith, and the assorted sellsword looking for gold. At first, Sansa had tried to greet each man individually, to thank him for his courage and devotion, but eventually the duties of the castle repairs overwhelmed her, and she sent Geoffrey to do it instead. He ensured that each traveller received a hot meal and night spent in a bed, in front of a fire, before sending them to the outpost.

She was making the trip today to preemptively show her gratitude; unrest hadn't started up yet, but Sansa wanted to speak to the men before they became weary. The armor had been Geoffrey's idea, of course, and Sansa could understand his reasoning. She was general as well as queen, and if she were to meet her troops, then she supposed she should look the part.

Still, that didn't mean she enjoyed the stiff, uncomfortable armor, although at least in the winter sun it kept her warm enough.

They arrived at the outpost in early afternoon, just as the sun was dropping into the treeline, casting long, dangerous shadows across the snow. The outpost was a ridge of rickety wood-and-stone buildings that grew a tiny bit longer with each arrival of new soldiers, although it still, at times, felt dreadfully small. Raging bonfires burned at short intervals between the buildings, throwing off heat and light and thick black smoke that marred the flawless spread of sky.

A member of her Queensguard helped Sansa down from the sled, and Geoffrey was waiting for her in the snow, wrapped in furs and wools. "They've prepared a meal for us," he told her, leading her toward the largest of the buildings. "You can give your speech before the sun sets, and then we'll have time to eat."

Sansa nodded, feeling grim. Her armor clanked as she walked, echoing against the clanking of her guardsman, the clanking of the men making their way into the dinner hall. She knew the men were watching her, and she kept her back straight and her head high. No one jeered or shouted insults, but no one cheered her arrival, either.

Her guards led her into the dining hall. The long low benches were covered, Sansa noticed, more in flagons of wine than platters of food. The hum of men's voices died away when she entered: no one had bothered to announce her, because there was no need. A woman dressed in armor on the dangerous edge of civilization - that was announcement enough.

"This way, your Grace," murmured Geoffrey, and Sansa offered her arm by rote, keeping her eyes on the gaunt, weatherworn faces of the men staring back at her. Most of them were cowled in the brown robes of the sworn brothers, as she expected, but they still stared at her with a sullenness she would not have expected from priests.

Geoffrey led her to the front of the dining hall. The silence in the room burned at her ears; she could feel her heart thumping in every part of her body. Speeches didn't normally make her so nervous, but something about being in their space and wearing their armor - she felt like a fraud, like she had no right to speak to them.

A soldier helped her onto the dais, and she turned to face the men. Torches burned along the walls. Two flickered directly behind her head, their heat warming her helmet until she felt sweat drip down the back of her neck.

For a moment, she lost her words.

Behind a cupped hand, Geoffrey whispered, "Winterfell thanks you."

And like that, the speech appealed wholesale in Sansa's thoughts. "Winterfell thanks you," she said, and her voice rang out as clear and lovely as a song. "And the North thanks you, for your bravery and courage in this time of darkness. I will not even pretend to understand the travails you face with each passing night, but know that I am grateful for every step you take into the cold, for every drawn sword and cloud of frosted breath."

Sansa could hardly see the men at this point; the crowd bled into the smoky, orange haze of the firelight. She was aware of a few voices muttering in agreement, and she raised the volume of her voice at the allotted times, gestured in the practiced places. The speech's crescendo rattled deep in her bones. Like most such speeches, it didn't really say much of anything, but Sansa had learned long ago how to put on a performance.

"So those of you who leave the safety of the fires tonight, I walk with you in spirit. And those who leave the safety of the fires on the next, and the next - know that you will always be beloved by the North."

And then she lifted her helmet away from her head - a lovely burst of coolness! - and gave them her bright, dazzling smile.

For two heartbeats the room was utterly silent.

Then it erupted into noise, applause and shouts of joy and the heavy wooden rattle of wine cups slamming against the table. Sansa took in a deep breath.

"I think that went very well, your Grace." Geoffrey appeared at her side, took her arm, and led her off the dais. "The Commander set up a table for you here. You can eat, and then we'll show you to your quarters for the night."

The food was already laid out when Sansa sat down - a thick brown stew and hunks of black bread. Sansa hardly tasted her meal, as she was still dizzy from giving her speech, but she ate it quickly. One of the guardsmen brought her a bottle of sour red wine, bowing as he set it on the table. Geoffrey smiled apologetically when he opened it.

"Not the highest quality, I'm afraid."

"As if they need to care about drinking the finest Dornish gold here." Sansa took a long drink of wine. The taste was a jolt of memory: it drew her back seven years into the past, when she had been held captive at King's Landing, during the start of the war - it had still been summer then, and another year or so would pass before the winter descended over Westeros and rendered the wars of men obsolete. She had known the smell, then, more so than the taste. She had only tasted it once, after all, in a room filled with green light.

Sansa took another drink. Already the initial rush of recollection was gone; the more she drank, the more the wine became a sensation of the present, not the past.

The realization made her sad.

"Your Grace? Are you all right?" Geoffrey leaned in close to her. "You seem dazed."

"Yes," Sansa said, staring distractedly out at the rowdy tables of men. Her thoughts were still in King's Landing, in its darkened, shadowy hallways. Not that she realized it at the time, but she had always felt safest when those hallways were drenched in night, when all the day's cruelties were asleep. "Yes, I'm fine."

"I thought the wine might be going to your head."

"It was." Sansa set her cup down, tried to pull herself out of the fog of the past. "A bit stronger than what I'm used to."

"Well, of course, your Grace. The promise of drunkenness is one of the only ways to convince men to come fight for us." His eyes glittered with teasing.

Sansa laughed. "Men are easily fooled, it seems."

"You'll notice there aren't any women here. Except for your Grace, of course."

"Yes," Sansa said, "and I'm sure that's because of the choice of wine."

Geoffrey laughed, and Sansa gestured for her guards to step over to her table. "I think I'd like to see my quarters now. I'm feeling - a bit drawn out."

"Of course, your Grace."

The filed out of the dining hall, Sansa flanked on either side by guards, Geoffrey leading the way. Outside, twilight had fallen, the sky a deep, velvety purple, the snow silvery in the moonlight. Sansa's breath condensed into white steam.

"It's colder," she said.

"Do you think so, your Grace?" Geoffrey turned to her. "It's always colder at night."

"That isn't want I meant." Sansa wished she was out of this accursed armor so she could wrap her arms around herself. Her favorite fur cloak should be waiting for her in her sleeping quarters, and she had every intention of stripping out of the armor and bundling herself in it. "I mean - the air feels different. Sharper somehow."

"I fear that might be the wine speaking, your Grace."

Sansa frowned. "I'm not drunk, Geoffrey."

"Of course not, your Grace." Geoffrey bowed graciously. "But I don't want you to work yourself into fright. You're perfectly safe here."

Sansa looked out at the fire burning in the darkness. She could hardly feel their warmth.

"Cold is cold," Geoffrey said. "You're used to the heated walls of Winterfell. Come, come, let's see you to your quarters." He took her by the arm again, and this time Sansa allowed him. But she worried: Geoffrey knew as well as she that the cold wasn't always the same. Sometimes the cold was merely the cold, certainly - but other times, it brought nightmares.

He was lying to her, trying to reassure her. It did not work.

Her quarters were located in a small stone hut near the largest of the fires, guarded by a pair of wildlings in ill-fitting armor. Geoffrey's eyes widened when he saw them.

"My apologies, your Grace, I asked specifically for sworn brothers when I arranged -"

"It's fine." Sansa only wanted out of the cold. In the short walk from the dining hall, the cold had worked its way under her skin. It had turned her blood to ice water.

And Geoffrey kept chattering along, pretending everything was fine.

But Sansa knew how to look for troubles. She had seen the worried expressions on the men running the outpost, the way the looked at her with mixture of anxiety and fear and anger. They might have applauded her speech, but that was before the cold settled over the outpost like a layer of ice.

Now they regarded her as if her appearance were an old whispered curse.

One of the wildlings pushed the door open for her. Ice broke off the frame and shattered on the stone walkway. Sansa stepped inside and allowed Geoffrey to follow her since she would never be able to remove the armor on her own and she couldn't bear the thought of bringing her handmaiden this far north.

She immediately took off the heavy, awkward gloves and tossed them aside with a clank.

The room was cramped but warm: the fire cast high, golden-edged shadows on all the walls. Her fur cloak was draped across the bed, just as she had expected, along with a thick winter-wool gown and a pair of ermine gloves, but her other trunk hadn't arrived yet.

"I know it's not Winterfell -" Geoffrey began.

"It's perfectly acceptable." Sansa sighed, took off her helmet, tossed it on the nearby table. "Honestly, I just want out of this armor. And where's Reynard with my books? You did ask him to fetch them when we arrived, didn't you?" Her heart beat quickened. She didn't like thinking of any of her Queensguard being delayed in the dark and the cold. "Why isn't -"

"Forgive me, your Grace, but I sent him to the sleds as we were leaving the dining hall. I didn't think to ask him when we arrived." He smiled. "It will take him a bit longer, having to drag the trunk through the snow."

"Why did you do that, Geoffrey? Why didn't he bring it with my clothes?"

"Well, I didn't know if you would need the books, your Grace. I thought you might wish to stay in the dining hall -"

"They have work to do," Sansa said. And so do I, back at Winterfell. She pushed the thought aside. Would this vicious cold feel any more natural if she were tucked away behind Winterfell's walls? Of course it wouldn't. She remembered the first time she felt cold like this - cold like the kiss of death. She remembered.

Sansa took a deep breath.

"Would you like me to go check on him?"

"No!" Sansa's voice bounced off the walls, startling herself, startling Geoffrey, who blinked at her with concern. "No," she said again, softer this time. "I need your help removing the breastplate."

"Of course, your Grace." Geoffrey stepped forward, and Sansa turned toward the fire, her heart still hammering painfully inside her chest. She stared at the flames. The smell of smoke was a strange sort of comfort.

Outside, a man screamed.

Sansa jerked away from Geoffrey, all her senses alert. The fire sputtered in the hearth.

"I'm sure it was nothing," Geoffrey said, but Sansa heard the shiver in his voice, the halt of hesitation. "I'm sure someone drank too much at the -"

Another scream, louder this time, and closer. The door slammed opened and Sansa gave a shout and cowered back, but it was only one of the wildling guards, his sword drawn, his face wild with fear.

"The lady," he said, "should run."

"You will address her as your Grace," said Geoffrey.

"Shut up!" Sansa said, forgetting herself in her terror. "It's them, isn't it? The cold - I could feel it."

The wilding didn't answer, only bounded out of the room, leaving the door hanging open. The sounds of battle poured into the room, men screaming and shouting. A cold wind followed, then a scatter of ice that melted and steamed in the heat of the fire. The fire - the fire kept them away, but only if it was large enough, hot enough. A hearth fire wouldn't do - Sansa remembered.

"We have to get to the bonfires," Sansa gasped. She grabbed Geoffrey by the arm and pulled him toward the door.

"Your Grace, we can't go outside. The battle - no one expects you to really fight."

"We have to get to the fires!" Sansa pushed him through the door. "That's the safest pla -"

In the doorway, Sansa froze. The cold blasted across her bare face, and the smell of blood hung on the air, and in the darkness, she saw only shapes, silhouettes bleeding and blurring together.

And the fires -

The fires were out -

All her hope shattered like ice.

And then she heard someone say her name. Her given name, Sansa - not saying, no. Screaming.

"Geoffrey!" Sansa whipped her head around in terror, then covered her mouth with her stiff, freezing bare hands and screamed. He was gone. He had been ripped away from her and she hadn't even noticed.

In a daze, she followed his voice, and for a moment the moonlight was bright enough that she saw him dragged across the landscape by tall thin creature that glowed like nighttime snow. The creature lifted its head and it eyes were the cold cold blue that had haunted her for the last two years.

Sansa screamed.

"Run!" Geoffrey shouted, his voice strangled.

Sansa ran.

She ran in the direction of the dining hall, in the direction of the stables. But the night was dark without the light from the fires, too dark, and swords sliced through the cold night air, and men screamed and died. At one point something hot and sticky splattered across the side of Sansa's face, but she pressed back her revulsion and ran as fast as she could in her heavy clanking armor.

She heard a hissing like the northern wind.

Sansa shrieked with fear and forced herself to look over her shoulder, where she found a pale thin face looking back at her, eyes bright as the moon. In one unthinking motion she pulled her sword out of its scabbard and swung it in a wide arc: but the Other met it a thin shard of glass, and her sword shattered into a million pieces.

It wouldn't have worked anyway, she thought stupidly, We only painted it black. And then, before a flood of desperation could seize her, she ran. She ran and she knew the creature was chasing her. She could feel its cold breath on the back of her neck. Tears stung hot at the corners of her eyes, blurring and smearing the surrounding darkness until she couldn't tell snow from sky.

Her foot caught on something in the ground, something thick and soft, and she tipped forward and crashed into the snow. The cold burned her bare hands, but she scrambled over her obstacle - Oh gods it's a man a man a dead man - and then she saw the light of those blue eyes and then she saw, in the white half-frozen hand of the dead man, a short fat obsidian dagger.

Sansa didn't think. She only grabbed the blade and shoved it up, up into the Other leaning over her, up under his strange moonlight armor -

And then she was drenched by water so cold she thought at first that she had died. The Other was gone, leaving in its wake only a patch of winter sky, the stars as bright and hard as diamonds.

Sansa crawled backward over the snow, her teeth chattering, her lips and fingers numb. Somehow she still held the dagger, and she clenched it so tightly that it felt like an extension of herself. Slowly, the world came back to her: screaming and shadows, bonfires smoldering into piles of grey ash. Sansa gasped and forced herself up to standing. Her hair was turning into ice. She realized she couldn't feel her fingers - only the obsidian blade, jutting out of her arm, a new hand that she had grown in the cold.

She ran.

This time, she did not run to the stables. She did not run anywhere. She had lost her sense of direction in the dark, and she ran toward the trees, because there, at least, the shadows weren't moving. The battle sounds fell away until she only heard her breath, ragged and rattling inside her chest.

And then she wasn't running anymore.

Sansa was jerked to a stop, stumbling. She screamed: something had grabbed hold of her arm. She yanked against it but it did not let go, and she screamed again, because how was it that she could kill the monster that had killed her husband and survive only to face another and die.

She would not die. She would not.

Sansa twisted around, ignoring the pain as her arm didn't twist with her, and shoved the blade into her attacker. Except it didn't go in. It bounced off the armor and into the snow. And it was only then that Sansa realized the armor wasn't reflecting the moonlight, and that her attacker was tall but not thin, and that he held a sword made of black stone in his free hand.

"The little bird thinks she can kill," he said, in a voice like ashes scraped out of a hearth.

All the air left Sansa's body. In the sudden stillness of the woods, the battle was a thousand miles away. She forgot her frozen fingers and her frozen hair. She forgot, for a moment, her fear. She only looked up and up until the moonlight caught a face she had not seen for seven years.

"You," she gasped.

And then, like a proper lady, she fainted.