The Hightowers don't often visit the school - certainly the Old Man, the infamous Leyton, never does - so this must be a particularly special occasion, especially given that they're accompanied by a security team with the subtle green-embroidered roses on the breast (and arse) pockets of their suits. Sansa knows those roses, know that they come from Highgarden, and supposes that there must be something big going on if Mace has supplied his father-in-law with a security detail, especially given that Sansa knows that the two men absolutely loathe one another, and neither would be particularly sorry to see the other dead, except for the hurt it would cause their mutual family.

Old Leyton is a tall, handsome man, his silver-white hair striking against his sun-dark skin, and Sansa recognises the quiet, unassuming charm he uses on Elayne, the receptionist, from his eldest grandson, even if she only had the pleasure of Willas Tyrell's company for a single evening. She thinks that it's whatever small measure of his grandfather that there is in Willas that prevented her from recognising him straight away, because he's very much like his father, and she reminds herself to tell Margaery so - Marg had laughed herself sick after finding out about Sansa spending the night in her brother's guest room, and still brings it up, even almost a year later.

Doctor Hightower walks with the quiet assurance that comes from money and influence (Sansa's grandfathers have the same walk, even Granddad, sick from the chemo as he is, so it's something she recognises easily), and Sansa watches him curiously as he leans on a cane that she thinks is more for the look of the thing than for any practical purpose. She's gotten good at reading body language since she started training as a special needs teacher, because many of her students can't articulate their needs and desires with words, and often not just because of physical disabilities, but anyone could see the tension under Doctor Hightower's gorgeously cut dark grey suit, or the anxiety in the way he fiddles at the knot of his silver-and-red tie.

Doctor Merryweather arrives down the stairs, regal and totally in control of whatever might be thrown her way, and frowns only a little when Doctor Hightower refuses her invitation to join her in her office. Merryweather prefers to handle everything in her office, because it's so completely her terrain, and she looks put out when the Old Man just ticks his cane against the hardwood floor and looks at her over his glasses.

"What's going on?" Devan whispers, leaning over the bannister behind Sansa. "Is that who I think it is?"

Devan's one of the few new friends Sansa has made in years, a little younger than her and twice as outgoing, but also very serious and sensible and solid. He grew up with Arya's girlfriend, Shireen, and Sansa knows she can trust him because Arya vetted him very thoroughly after Sansa danced with him at Shireen's twenty-first.

"Looks serious," she whispers back. "Can you ever remember seeing a Hightower in the school, aside from the Professor?"

Everyone who works in the school is a little bit afraid of Rhea Hightower, who is a complete force of nature and also scarily beautiful, but Sansa kind of likes her. She reminds her of Nana Lya, who died when Sansa was nine.

"Go ask," Devan says. "You're friends with that Margaery girl, aren't you? She's his granddaughter - use that as your in."

Sansa is about to tell him where he can shove his in when Doctor Merryweather calls her from across the foyer, one immaculate brow arched in impatience.

"Miss Stark," she says, "this is Doctor Leyton Hightower, chairman of the board of trustees."

"A pleasure, Doctor Hightower," Sansa says, ignoring that Merryweather failed to introduce her. "Sansa Stark - I teach the year three Hearing Impaired class."

"And somehow tolerate our Margaery," Doctor Hightower says, all smiles and worry lines around his bright eyes. "I've heard a great deal, Miss Stark - my wife has high hopes."

Merryweather, clearly unhappy with this turn of events - she likes to monopolise the Hightowers when they do deign to drop by - turns to Sansa, frowning more sternly than Sansa has ever seen.

"Doctor Hightower is here to remove his great-granddaughter," she says, looking five seconds away from an eye-roll. "Since you are familiar to her both in and out of school, and since you are reportedly friends with her security detail, he would like you to alert Aster and Mr. Umber, and to escort them off the property."

"Sir-"

Doctor Hightower stops her with a raised hand before turning to Merryweather, who stands there stubbornly until he verbally dismisses her. Sansa can't really blame her - the Academy runs as well as it does only thanks to Merryweather being so damn good at her job - but is glad to see her retreat all the same.

"My granddaughter doesn't have many friends," Doctor Hightower says. "And my wife doesn't like many people - nor do I, for that matter. But we both like your grandfathers, and we both liked your grandmothers a great deal, and I have nothing but respect for your parents. You're probably my granddaughter's closest friend, aside from that strange girl she's been seeing these past few months, and Aster, who has liked absolutely none of the women her father has ever brought back to their house, likes you, Miss Stark. I would bring Aster myself, but since we cannot be sure who the target is at present, it's best that the family remains scattered until we can reach safety-"

"But sir, why do you need me to remove Aster from the school? I don't understand."

Leyton Hightower's smile fades then, and he removes his glasses to rub at one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. She knows that look - she's seen it on Uncle Bryn's face twice a day whenever she goes to visit Granddad - and braces herself for the worst.

"My grandson," he says, "was taken off the street four hours ago, Miss Stark, and we need to get his daughter to safety as quickly and as quietly as is humanly possible. So please, I beg you, for Margaery's sake if for nothing else, do this thing for my family. Please."

Aster Martell-Tyrell is a strikingly pretty little girl, tall for her age, with her mother's golden-fair hair and her father's golden-tan skin and eyes the same honey-gold as Margaery's. She smiles brightly when Sansa approaches her on the yard, and follows her inside cheerfully enough, her bright pink combat boots clunking along on the polished floors.

"Your great-grandfather has given me permission to bring you to Highgarden, Az," Sansa tells her, using the nickname because while they are still at school, this is the furthest thing from a normal day imaginable, so she thinks a little informality won't go amiss. She got to know Aster better over the summer, because she spent a lot of time with Marg and Loras and Renly, and so did Aster, so she's going to play up on that to keep Aster calm. "You need to grab anything before we leave?"

Aster's face falls a little - she's a Martell and a Tyrell, so she must know that there aren't many good reasons for her to be pulled out of school unexpectedly - but she just leads the way to her classroom, where she gathers up her schoolbag (as pink as her boots) and her coat, and then she all but clicks her heels together as she waits expectantly for Sansa to lead the way forward.

Sansa turns to Smalljon.

Smalljon Umber has been Sansa's friend for as long as she can remember - she vouched for him, when he needed clearance to work in the school as part of Aster's security detail - which is why she's glad he's on duty today. This is going to be hard enough as it is, and she doesn't need to be fighting with Aster's bodyguard on top of everything else. Gods, who's going to take her class after lunch? She didn't even think to ask!

"Aster has to get to Highgarden without being detected, as soon as possible," Sansa says, signing along for Aster's benefit. "How do we get her there safely?"

Smalljon scratches his chin thoughtfully, looks at Aster, then smiles.

"Simple," he says. "We make her look completely different."

With whiteboard marker ink turning her fair hair black (pity, Sansa thinks, that there's nothing much she can do to disguise the undercut), shoes and coat taken from the Lost and Found box in reception, and glasses taken from the year five dress up box, Aster doesn't look herself - she looks older, if nothing else, which should throw off anyone who might be watching the school with a mind to taking her off the street when the final bell goes. That's all they need, really, but Sansa agrees when Smalljon suggest tugging a bobble hat down over Aster's admittedly patchy new hairdo all the same, explaining the reasons to Aster before she does anything.

"Is Daddy in trouble?" Aster asks in return, and Sansa doesn't know how to lie to her - so she doesn't.

"I don't know," she says, "but Doctor Hightower thinks so, and I think we should trust him."

Aster nods, says "Pop knows lots of things," and then goes along with whatever Sansa and Smalljon suggest from there on.

She's a well-behaved girl - she's old enough that she doesn't really need to, but she holds onto Smalljon's massive hand as they cross the road all the same, and she slumps low in the back seat of Sansa's car without needing to be told, and seems far, far calmer than any other child her age would be. She seems calmer than any child her age should be, and Sansa can't help but wonder why that is - have her parents prepared her for this eventuality? The Tyrells have plenty of enemies, after all, thanks to Mace's tenure as mayor and Marg's journalistic work, and even just the company itself, which has absorbed so many smaller competitors that it would be silly to think all those takeovers were amiable. She half-remembers Marg telling her about some trouble Willas got involved with somewhere in Essos, too, so maybe that?

And that's without touching the Martells, who, thanks to Oberyn (Sansa never considered this, but the Viper is Aster's grandfather) have more enemies than they can shake a stick at.

Her phone tinkles from the shelf under the radio, and she asks Smalljon to check it for her. He looks jumpy, sitting forward in his seat a little so the gun strapped to his ankle isn't far away from his hand, but he checks her phone all the same, harrumphing when he opens the text for her. It's from Theon - who Sansa always loathed as a creepy perv, when he was just Robb's friend, but who she kind of likes since he and Jeyne got together, after Ramsay - and is nothing at all that she wanted to hear.

Get Aster Martell-Tyrell out of the school. Break the law if you have to. She is not safe.

"Well, that's fabulous," Smalljon huffs, slipping her phone back into the shelf and pressing his hands to his face. "Greyjoys! Fantastic!"

Sansa shivers at the thought - everyone knows that, since Old Quellon died, Balon has been running operations the old way. Quellon was of her grandfathers' generation, and Sansa has heard enough stories to know that even though he was a crook and a criminal and not a good man, he was a decent man, and never left anyone in the state his sons liked to induce.

"Just pray they don't have him down the docks," Sansa says, because she knows from Theon that nobody gets really fucked up by the Greyjoys unless they're taken down the docks. "It's going to be fine."

Smalljon snorts, but he doesn't say another word until they pull into the massive carpark at Highgarden.

Highgarden was once the primary residence for the Tyrell family, but about twenty years ago, they converted the bottom three floors and donated those and the gardens to the city, as the National Museum of Natural History. The only things that can't be grown in Highgarden are the blue Northern roses and some varieties of Dornish flowers, so it was the ideal location, really. The Tyrells held onto the top two floors - the fourth is offices, mostly, Mace's private and Doctor Alerie's personal, and the office Marg uses when she gets paranoid about her workspace at the Herald's offices, things like that. Sansa's been there plenty, but she's never been to the fifth floor, which Marg and Loras have only ever described as safe.

That's where she intends on bringing Aster now, if she can get in. Going on the massive police presence, she's going to assume they've figured out that the threat is to Mace, and Sansa has no idea how she's going to get through the blockade.

"I've got this," Smalljon says, crouching down and pointing over his shoulder. "Come on, little lady, climb aboard."

Aster is tall enough that she'd look silly piggy-backing anyone but Smalljon, and Sansa trails along in their wake, feeling completely surplus to requirements. She still isn't sure why Doctor Hightower asked her to come, when Smalljon is perfectly capable of taking care of his charge, so she just steps a little closer and follows him and Aster inside after he flashes his ID and Aster shows off what looks a lot like a signet ring on a chain around her neck.

Maybe this is why Doctor Hightower sent for her, she realises, as they walk in the door. Smalljon looks faint when he realises just how many people are here, but for Sansa, who's been to all of Marg's and Loras' birthday parties, as well as Mace and Doctor Alerie's, ever since she was seventeen, well, it's nothing, really.

(With that in mind, it kind of annoys her that she never met Willas until the night of the exhibition, but she has more important things to worry about, so she pushes that thought aside and ignores how flushed she feels.)

The Tyrells are a huge family, and when you add in the Hightowers, well, it's a jungle. She can spy enough curly fair heads to pick out most of the Hightower siblings, and enough dark curly hair to spot the vast array of Tyrell cousins. The museum must have been shut down for this - she can't see anyone who doesn't look at least vaguely familiar, so she coaxes Aster down from Smalljon's back and kneels down in front of her.

"Do you want to go to your grandparents, or do you want me to find Margie?"

"Granddad," Aster signs back before Sansa can even finish, looking panicky and pink in the cheeks - finally reacting as Sansa would have expected. "I want Granddad."

Sansa takes her hand when she stands up, then stands on her tip-toes to find Mace - right in the middle of the room, of course, with Doctor Alerie on his arm.

"Okay," she tells Aster. "We're going to use Smalljon to push through all these people so we can get to your granddad."

And that's exactly what they do - they follow in the path Smalljon carves, and when Sansa guides Aster into the little clearing in the middle of the room, under the blue whale skeleton, well, Mace Tyrell cries like a baby and grabs hold of his granddaughter so tight Sansa thinks poor Aster might crack a rib.

Willas wakes up for the second time to find a woman sitting in a chair beside him, sewing up the deep, uneven cut on his thigh. He'd been in too much pain to realise it at the time, but the van door had slammed on his leg twice - once on the kneecap, the second time just above it. His knee is really and truly fucked this time, he thinks, so he doesn't much care about it, but he's glad someone in the Greyjoys' operation realises the dangers of blood loss and sepsis.

"You must be Asha," he says, or at least tries to - his tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth and to his teeth, and he's groggy enough that that isn't helping, either, but she smiles, so he forges on. "Charmed, I'm sure."

"I'm sure," she agrees, setting aside her needle and picking up a dressing and a long roll of bandages. "Anything else need stitching?"

He hasn't a clue - he has cracked ribs need taping up, he thinks, and the bastards broke two of his fingers, which now need setting and splinting. He probes a little and discovers a missing tooth, and the grogginess makes him think he might have a head injury of some sort, since he doesn't remember passing out last time, but he doesn't know that there's anything much Miss Asha Greyjoy can do to help with any of that unless she calls an ambulance.

"I wouldn't mind a drink of water," he offers, and she smiles again - a sharp thing, all teeth and bitten back laughter - and rises to fetch a glass from the sink under the high-up window.

"You know why you're here?" she asks, as she helps him sip at the water. "I mean, not just because of you father - do you have seven million pounds worth of Ghiscari silver tucked away in a vault somewhere?"

"So you're the good cop," he realises. "Your uncles were very interested in that silver, too - do they have contacts in Lys? Or did they just read about it in the Herald and think it looked like a good score?"

"Oh, that would be telling," she laughs. "But if you do have it, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to let them know here it is - do that, and as soon as your father wipes away their tax debt and pays your ransom, well, you'll be home free."

"I'm sure," he says, tipping his head back and closing his eyes against the spinning of the room. "How long have I been here?"

"Seven hours," she tells him, coaxing his head back up and making him sip more of the water. "Apparently they wanted to get your little girl to use as leverage against you, but she was gone from her school - that was all Euron, by the way, my old man wouldn't have done that."

"Aster is safe? My daughter is safe?"

"I don't know about that, but she's not here, anyway."

He takes a deep breath that turns to a sob when his ribs move, and barely holds himself back from crying. They promised to hurt Azzie earlier, and to know that she isn't with them, well, it's the best news he's had in weeks.

He's so focused on settling his ribs as best he can to keep them from hurting that he doesn't notice Asha Greyjoy being replaced by her uncle Victarion who, while not so inventively and enthusiastically cruel as her uncle Euron, still manages an artful level of brutality.

"I told Pop to have you bring Aster out of the school," Margie tells her, linking her arm and guiding her to where someone - probably Doc Alerie - has arranged for bottles of water, bowls of fruit, and platters of what Sansa thinks are flapjacks laid out. "I knew she wouldn't spook with you, and that you'd remember to tell her what was going on."

"And you weren't adverse to the idea of having a friend here, either," Sansa guesses, smiling when Margie just shrugs. "Any news? Your grandfather couldn't tell me much - I got the impression he dind't want to say anything in front of Doctor Merryweather."

"Oh, he hates her, has done ever since she told him and Nana to get bent when they tried to tell her how to run the Academy," Margie says easily, pressing a bottle of water into Sansa's hand and filling a bowl with strawberry and slices of peach - Sansa's favourites, and Margie's, too. "As for news, well, we've had a ransom demand from the Greyjoys. A video of Willas."

"Oh, Marg-"

Margie waves it off, calmer than Sansa thinks she ought to be, and shrugs again.

"He looked alive, which is the main thing," she says briskly. "We can fix just about anything else, so long as he's alive."

Sansa knows how that feels - she remembers how it was when Robb was killed. She hopes Margie never has to experience that side of things, and casts about for something helpful to do.

The thing is, though, that for all the Tyrells often seem completely chaotic - especially when compared with, say, the Lannisters, who do everything with severe, ostentatious perfection - they're generally perfectly organised, and so there isn't much that she can do to help. Smalljon is standing behind Aster's chair, over where she's sitting with Mace and Doc Alerie by the slightly creepy taxidermy basking shark, Loras is drinking tea with hs grandmother, Renly's hand heavy on his shoulder, and Garlan, who Sansa doesn't know as well as she does Loras, is kneeling down in front of his pregnant wife, Leonette. They're surrounded by their kids - four of them, all girls - who all have that lush, curly Tyrell hair.

There's no real reason for her to be here, not beyond keeping Margie company, so she thinks she might wait a while, see if there's any more news, and if not, she'd be as well off leaving.

"They broke two of his fingers," Margie says suddenly, her perfect control rigid and sharp. "He can't talk to Azzie without his hands, Sansa. Why would they do that?"

"Your father is very willing to pay the ransom," Asha says, splinting Willas' fingers very efficiently. "And he has agreed to my father's demands about the port duties - you'll be home with your little girl in no time."

Willas doubts that very much - now that he's thinking straight again, thanks to the localised anaesthetics Asha injected into his hand and leg and torso, he can remember other situations like this. Aerys Targaryen at Duskendale, back when he was a kid. Robb Stark, five or six years ago at the Twins. Both times taken hostage, both times tortured and killed.

Even after the ransom demands were met.

"I want to speak to my father," he says. "Next time you call him, I want to talk to my father - I won't trust that you don't have my daughter unless my father tells me she's with him."

Asha regards him curiously from the sink where she's washing her hands, an odd little smile on her face.

"You're a very devoted father," she says. "We did our research, you know. We have hundreds of photographs of the two of you together. We even bugged your house - which was pointless, since you never speak."

"Well, my daughter is deaf," Willas points out. "It would be pointless to talk out loud to her."

"Even if she were here," Asha says cheerfully, "at least she wouldn't be able to hear you screaming."

"Get him out first," the plainclothes cop says - Sansa knows him, she thinks. He's a Royce, she's fairly sure, not Yohn that was friends with Dad, a cousin of his, the one with the mouthy daughter - as he leans over Mace's desk. Doc Alerie is sitting off to one side, looking a little out of it, as if she's been sedated. Sansa wouldn't be surprised if the doc had been sedated, because from what Margie's told her, Willas and his mother are like two peas in a pod, so doubtless, she's going out of her mind.

Sansa's kind of impressed with how Mace is handling himself, really - she always expected that he'd be the one to go to pieces, if anything went wrong Chez Tyrell, but no, he's completely in control. He holds onto Aster a little too tight, and gets a bit flustered if Garlan, Loras, and Margie aren't within sight, but overall he's been pretty relaxed.

Sansa's a bit on edge herself - even if there wasn't tension so thick in the air she can taste it, this is all a little bit too reminiscent of how things were up at home when they were waiting on news of Robb. She wants to believe that the Tyrells will get a happier ending, but she can't, not really, not when all she can see is Mum clawing at her face when the video tape arrived, a video of Robb being put up against a wall and shot.

"Sansa," Margie says, her hand warm and shaking in Sansa's, "will it take long? This exchange thing?"

Sansa hasn't a clue, to be honest - she knows that the exchange should be simple, a neat swap of the massive case of cash and a written guarantee that the Greyjoys are now exempt from all port duties for Willas, in whatever condition they've left him in since the last video file arrived.

He'd looked good, considering they'd had him for seven hours.

"It shouldn't do," she promises. "Should be over nice and quick."

For the sake of the man who'd giggled in hysterics over whiskey and ginger after spending three quarters of a million pounds on hideously ugly artwork, more than for the put-together, perfectly groomed antiquities dealer in the picture on Mace's desk, Sansa hopes it's quick.

They've put him in a wheelchair, which is annoying - he's always hated being in a wheelchair, even when he should be, because it makes him feel helpless - but at least he's not tied to a chair any more. The Greyjoys themselves are staying well back, of course, because they're not going to risk getting caught in the crossfire.

Willas is a little surprised that Asha didn't come. He half thought she might, just for the fun of it - but he wouldn't be surprised if Dad's gotten the police to put snipers on the roofs on the far side of the bridge, and he wouldn't be surprised if the Greyjoys know that.

Which leaves him here, with two men he knows by reputation, but who do not live up to that reputation at all.

Especially not Tristifer Botley, Asha Greyjoy's third. Qarl the Maid, her second, is at least as big as everyone says he is, but he's also got the most pathetic excuse for facial hair Willas has ever seen, and that makes him much less intimidating.

"Sorry," Tristifer mumbles when the wheelchair jumps over a bump in the road, jarring Willas' leg. It's so painful already, now that the anaesthetic is wearing off, that he barely noticed it. "Didn't mean to do that."

Willas has a horrible feeling that the reason Qarl the Maid is one of his escorts is that Qarl, as Asha's second, is rumoured to do most of her killing for her. Once the ransom demands are met, what reason is there to keep Willas alive?

Dad is on the other side of the bridge, with Mum and Pop, and what looks like half of the police force. He can't make out much more than that, since they smashed his glasses, but he hopes to any god that might be listening that they didn't bring Aster. The very last thing he wants is for Aster to see him die, and he's fairly sure that he'll die on this bridge.

Sansa still isn't sure why she's here, but she'd tried to bow out and Margie had held so tight to her hand that her knuckles had popped.

They're crammed into a little van, a police van, watching the action on the bridge through the traffic cams - Aster is tucked up in Loras' lap, clinging tight to his jumper, and Garlan is leaning over his and Margie's chairs. They all look exactly alike, in the flickering blue-white light, and Sansa stays pressed back against the wall with Renly and Leonette, watching the screens through the gaps between the Tyrell siblings.

"He hates being in a wheelchair," Renly says quietly, which surprises Sansa so much she looks up at him, which makes him smile. "Will and me were at school together - that's how I met Loras. We know one another far too well, considering we're in-laws."

Sansa just about manages a smile at that - Renly's been marvellous all through this, bright and cheerful and terrifyingly optimistic, and she's fairly sure that all three Tyrell siblings who are present would have cracked up without him.

"Alright," Garlan says, all tension and white knuckles, "here we go."

Mace and one of the cops are walking over the bridge, towards Willas in his wheelchair and the two goons pushing him, and Sansa, she can't, she can't deal with this, she can't watch, she knows that this is going to end badly, because as they were wheeling Willas towards the middle of the bridge all she could see was Robb being pushed into frame before they put a gun to his temple and blew half his head out against the whitewashed wall behind him-

She throws up on the footpath along the river, close to the junction of the street and the bridge, close enough that she can see.

Oh, no. The very last thing she wants is to be able to see. She can't bear to see another family torn apart the way hers was by Robb's death. She can't do this. She won't.

"So what's the plan, once you have the ransom?" Willas says, dizzy with pain. "Toss me over the bridge? I won't be able to swim, not with all the drugs in my system, and definitely not with this leg. Or shoot me? It's one or the other, since I'll be able to identify all of the people who participated in my kidnap and torture, and the Greyjoys don't like loose ends."

"Have you a preference?" Qarl asks, sounding genuinely curious. "Most people prefer not to know."

"Shooting would be quicker," he says thoughtfully, "but, since I assume that the reason the traffic cameras are following our movement is so someone can watch it, presumably including my daughter, I think I'd rather you throw me off the bridge - that way Aster won't have to see me die a violent death."

"How very thoughtful," Qarl says in obvious surprise. "Drowning will be a lot more traumatic for you, you know."

"I know. But I'll be dead, so what difference will that make?"

Dad's been crying, Willas can see it in how red his face is between his eyes and his beard, and he's puling a massive suitcase in one hand (how much is the life of a thirty-nine year old antiquities dealer worth?) and a manilla envelope in the other. There's a gun pressed to Willas' nape, cold and hard, and he just hopes that Garlan - because it will be Garlan, he knows his brothers and sister as well as he knows himself and it will be Garlan who thinks to do it - covers Aster's eyes when Qarl pulls the trigger.

"You look like shit, son," Dad says, voice gruff and thick with tears, and Willas is fairly sure he's smiling, too. "Here's your ransom, now-"

It all happens so quickly.

One minute, Sansa is leaning over the railing, trying not to be sick, trying not to watch, and the next the big blonde one is throwing Willas - wheelchair and all - over the side of the bridge.

She hears gunshots as she climbs onto the ornate concrete railing, and more as she swandives into the river below. She used to do this from the bridge over the Tumblestone, back when she was a kid and they used to visit Granddad at Riverrun, and the current here isn't as quick so she makes good time, even though she's swimming against it.

There's noise - so much noise - coming from the bridge, and she can just about hear it over the clap of the water against her ears as she cuts through the waves towards Willas.

He landed headfirst, and he's face-down, unconscious, by the time she reaches him. There's a splash somewhere off to her left, presumably someone else diving in to help, but she has Willas on his back and above water before they get to her, and then to the nearest steps - she's half a Tully, after all, half a fish, and she will not let someone else's family be torn apart like this.

Willas doesn't quite wake up. He feels like he's having a conversation in sign language, like he has to think about what every word and gesture and sign and flash of light means.

First, a sharp spike of pain. Then throbbing pain in his chest, and- fruity lip balm, maybe? And a push down into his chest that jars him enough that he starts to cough. The foul taste of river water, burning in his chest, burning in his throat, slimed in his mouth. Bright, unfocused light - the sky? - and a pain in his chest like he's been kicked in the ribs. The impact with the water, or CPR? Or both?

He can hear Garlan's voice, and Dad's, both desperate and terrified, but it's neither of them that rolls him onto his side, and he doesn't think it's either of them that pulls something so tight around his bad leg that even given the pain he's already feeling, it hurts.

Something fogs, then, and when he comes to, Aster is there.

Sansa has thrown up twice - the river water was foul, even if she hadn't noticed it at the time, and the doctors want to keep her in for observation, just in case she picked up some sort of infection.

What "observation" has amounted to so far has been sitting in a big waiting room near the private rooms, surrounded by Tyrells and Hightowers and a few Martells, and spending an hour on the phone with Mum, who'd seen her in the river on the news and nearly lost her mind, apparently.

What "observation" also means is that Sansa is in prime position to watch Aster Martell-Tyrell scream a terrible, wounded, wordless cry every time someone tries to take her away from her father, once he's been brought up from theatre. Aster just sits there in the gap where her father's left leg was, her own legs tucked up and her chin resting on her knees. She slaps away everyone's hands except for her grandfather's, and Mace just sits behind her and strokes her hair, which is still patchily black from the ink Sansa and Smalljon rubbed into it earlier.

"You should be in bed," Loras says to her, nudging his hip against her shoulder. "The doctors said-"

"I'm not showing any sign of infection," she says, swatting him away and wrapping her arm back around Margaery's shoulders. "I'm fine, honestly."

Mace starts shouting for the family to come in, and they all run - Sansa can see Aster sprawled on top of Willas, and Doc Alerie is crying in Mace's arms, and Sansa feels...

She feels so jealous she could spit, but when Loras turns and smiles and beckons her in, she smiles back, and lets Renly guide her to her feet and into the already overcrowded room.

Willas looks like shit. His bad leg is now his missing leg, gone from the middle of his thigh down, and his hands are almost entirely splinted and bandaged, and he's got one of those nasal splint things and she knows too much about all of this and wishes she didn't and oh no no she cannot do this make it stop-

"Sansa," he says, "thank you. For Aster. And for me."

And for a moment, she isn't seeing Robb and Dad and Bran lying there on a morgue table or in a coma ward, it's just Willas, who spilled ginger ale on her purse and panicked until he realised it was only cheap faux leather so it'd do no harm, and who enthused over the virtues of the kids' art in the gallery as no one else had except her.

"It was nothing," she says, and something tense in her belly loosens and she is so, so thankful for the familiar smell of Smalljon's terrible aftershave when he catches her as she faints.

Willas can't speak to Aster, he can't hold a pen, he can't use a pair of crutches or a wheelchair, he can't even hold a damn spoon to eat his own ice cream, so he waits a week until the dislocated fingers on his left hand heal up enough that he can use the hand again, leaving him at least able to fingerspell to Az, before asking Margie for Sansa Stark's number.

"I want to thank her properly," he says defensively, when Margie gives him a Look. Azzie, sitting curled up under his arm, starts to laugh when Margie tells her what he's said, and he pokes her in the tummy as a reprimand, pouting at her until she leans up and kisses his cheek.

She doesn't stop giggling, of course, but after the terrifying few hours he spent believing that the Greyjoys had her, Aster can laugh at him all she wants.

Sansa comes in during evening visiting hours, with a long silk scarf the same shade of blue as her eyes hanging untied over her dark navy swing coat. She looks tired, as if she has a flu, but otherwise good. Beautiful, even, but he's already had two appointments with a therapist who warned him not to convince himself he's in love with Sansa just because she saved his life.

"Hi," she says, and he doesn't think he's convinced himself he's in love with her, but he would like to get to know her - between jumping into a river to save him, and that one drunken kind-of-date last year after the gala, and her being such a good friend to Margie, and to Loras, and Az being so fond of her, well, he thinks he'd really like to get to know her. "I got your text."

"Not up for phone calls yet," he tells her, smiling and feeling more than a little shy. She looks so good, after all, and he's sitting here with nothing more than boxers, blankets, and bandages keeping him decent. "There's something wrong with one of my ears, apparently - something to do with the impact with the water. I was a little drugged out of my head at the time."

She smiles at that, and takes the chair beside his bed, and tugs her scarf off. It makes her hair spill out from her collar, bright and lovely, and Willas fuzzily remembers seeing that bright red against the bright sky after he was pulled out of the water.

"I don't really know how to repay you," he says, using his good hand to push himself a bit more upright, wishing he'd done more of those crunches Loras was always advising him about because his stomach was not something he wanted to show off. "I- You saved my daughter's life. And mine. But Aster's."

Sansa's next smile is slow and warm, and fond. Willas knows Aster is easy to love, but he's her dad, so of course he finds her easy to love. It's good to see that it's something that extends outside the family, though.

"She's a wonderful girl," Sansa says, and yes, Willas really does want to get to know her, he wants to know everyone who loves his daughter, so he can share how much he loves her with the whole world.

"Daddy is getting dressed," Aster tells her, guiding her into the big sitting room to the left of the front door. It's got a huge, beautiful bay window that looks out over the green in the middle of the square, and a baby grand piano in some rich, deep wood that looks almost like mahogany but not quite. "He was going to wear something ugly but I made him change."

Aster's got a bandage over one ear - according to Margie, Az decided to she wanted cochlear implants in the wake of the Incident, because she wanted to feel more independent, and didn't want to left behind if no one remembered to sign for her. She's getting them done one at a time, to see if the first one will help before subjecting her to the healing process in both ears.

"How's the implant?" she asks, and Azzie smiles hugely, her brand new braces glinting in the light.

"It's weird," she admits. "But yesterday night Daddy was listening to music and I think I heard something."

The lights flick off and on, and Sansa and Aster both turn to where Willas is standing in the door, smiling and leaning on an ornate rosewood cane.

"Hi," he says, and then he sets his cane against the doorframe to sign at Aster. "Olwyn is setting up her homework in the downstairs study, so you're to spend tonight in the solarium, okay?"

"But-"

"No buts," he warns her, "solarium, unless Olwyn comes with you into the kitchen, and bed by ten, okay?"

Aster rolls her eyes, but she's smiling, and she leans up on her tip-toes to kiss Willas on the cheek.

"So," he says, once they're out the door and making their way to the waiting taxi. "I hope you like Pentoshi cuisine, because a new restaurant opened on the Maze that I've been dying to try..."