Chapter Text
Snow came early that year.
It started as a fine dust on the kitchen window, too thin to stick, then thickened over the afternoon into real flakes—slow, lazy spirals drifting down over the back fields and the dark bulk of the old castle beyond.
Sansa watched it from her seat at the table, chin in her hands, math workbook open and mostly ignored. The kettle hissed on the stove. Bran lay on the floor with his crayons, coloring a dragon bright purple. Arya sat on the counter, swinging her legs and getting crumbs everywhere.
“Feet down, please,” Catelyn said, not looking up from the list she was writing. “And if you spill another cup of juice on that shirt, you’re wearing Bran’s dinosaur pajamas to bed.”
“It was an accident,” Arya muttered.
“The last three times were accidents, too.” Catelyn’s voice held that warm warning that meant she wasn’t really angry. “Feet.”
Arya slid off the counter with exaggerated slowness, giving Sansa a look like she was sharing in some great injustice. Sansa tried not to smile. It was hard. Everything felt too bright today—brighter than the gray sky should allow.
Beyond the glass, the castle loomed: stone walls and broken towers, wrapped in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The Winterfell Foundation banners snapped in the cold wind. She loved looking at it. Loved imagining torches in the arrow slits, banners flying from the towers instead of construction tarps. Loved pretending that if she stared hard enough, the centuries between now and then might fold up like paper and she could walk straight into the stories.
“Mom?” she asked for what felt like the fiftieth time that week. “Are children allowed at the gala this year?”
Catelyn didn’t answer right away. She moved to the fridge, stuck another note beneath a magnet, crossed something off her list. The kitchen smelled like onions and bread and the lemon soap she used on the counters. Home.
“Sansa,” she said finally, “we’ve talked about this.”
“We talked about it,” Sansa agreed, sitting up straighter. “But you didn’t actually say no.”
Arya snorted. “You’re like a lawyer.”
“That’s not an insult, honey,” Catelyn told her automatically.
“It is a little,” Arya said.
Sansa ignored both of them, focusing on the things that mattered. “You said the gala is for raising money for the foundation. And for showing the board all the progress on the castle. And that it’s very important. You didn’t say no children, exactly. You said children ‘usually’ don’t go.”
Catelyn’s mouth twitched. “I don’t know if we should be encouraging you to listen that closely.”
“But someone has to carry on the Stark legal legacy,” Sansa said, mimicking her grandfather’s solemn tone. That got a real smile out of her mother. It gave her courage.
“And it’s dress up this year,” she added quickly, before Catelyn could remember to be stern. “Old Westerosi style. You said it yourself. ‘Like the stories.’ You know how much I love the stories.”
“You do realize the donors mean ‘historic reenactment’ when they say that,” Catelyn said. “Not… dragons.”
“They shouldn’t have said ‘like the stories’ if they didn’t want dragons,” Sansa said firmly.
Arya barked out a laugh. Bran looked up from his paper. “Draw dragon?” he asked, waving his crayon.
“Yes, sweetling,” Catelyn said. “You can draw ten dragons. Just not on the floor.” She exhaled, finally setting down her pen. “Sansa—”
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Ned came in, shrugging snow from his coat. His cheeks were pink from the cold; his hair held a few white flakes that hadn’t melted yet. He smelled like winter air and coffee.
“Storm’s picking up,” he said. “Robb and Theon are bringing in more wood from the shed.”
“Theon is supposed to be doing his homework,” Catelyn said.
“Robb says they’re studying ‘practical engineering,’” Ned replied, deadpan. “Something about load-bearing walls and snow forts.”
Catelyn closed her eyes briefly, amused and resigned. “Of course they are.”
Ned leaned over to kiss her cheek, then brushed Sansa’s hair back from her face with his knuckles. “How’s the math, little bird?”
“I’m very nearly almost about to begin,” Sansa said.
“That’s not how math works,” Arya said.
“It is when you’re waiting for very important news,” Sansa said, looking pointedly between her parents.
Ned raised a brow. “Important news?”
“She wants to go to the gala,” Arya translated, like the words were too ridiculous to bother forming. “Again.”
“I didn’t say again,” Sansa protested. “Because she never actually answered the first time. Or the second. Or the third.”
Catelyn gave Ned a look over Sansa’s head — a silent conversation: we have to decide.
“Ah,” Ned murmured.
“Sansa,” Catelyn tried again, gentle but firm, “we—”
“Are talking about it,” Sansa finished for her, hopeful and earnest.
Catelyn sighed, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Ned, could I speak with you a moment?”
They stepped into the hallway together.
Robb barreled through from the mudroom, grabbing his gloves and a pair of earmuffs. “Sansa! Come outside! The snow’s the best it’s been all week!”
“Robb, not now,” Sansa said, waving him away frantically.
He rolled his eyes at her dramatic tone. “Fine, but you’re missing the good stuff.” Then he bolted back out the door, boots thudding against the floorboards.
In the hallway, Catelyn lowered her voice. “She’s been so patient, Ned. Truly.”
“She’s eight,” he reminded gently. “It’s overwhelming.”
“She listens. She’s responsible. And she still believes in magic. We won’t have many years of that left.”
Ned let out a slow, resigned breath. “All right.”
When they returned to the kitchen, Ned reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cream-colored envelope embossed with the Winterfell Foundation seal.
Sansa’s heart shot straight into her throat.
He laid the envelope on the table in front of her. “This came this morning.”
Her fingers trembled as she picked it up. The paper felt too heavy, too official. The calligraphy on the front read:
Lady Sansa Stark
She looked up so fast her chair squeaked. “Is this—?”
“It’s an invitation,” Catelyn said, watching her closely. “For you. To attend the gala.”
The room seemed to tilt. Sansa tore the envelope open, careful not to rip the edges—Catelyn had taught her about stationery, about preserving nice things—but she couldn’t stop herself from ripping just a little anyway.
She unfolded the card. The words blurred, but the important ones burned bright: GUEST OF HONOR FAMILY… PERIOD-INSPIRED ATTIRE ENCOURAGED… CELEBRATION… WINTERFELL CASTLE.
She squealed. There was no other word for it. The sound burst out of her like the kettle on the boil. Bran clapped his hands over his ears and giggled. Arya winced like she’d been stabbed.
“You mean it?” Sansa gasped. “I can go? Actually go? Not stay at home and be babysat while you all go and tell stories about how beautiful the castle looks, and I have to imagine it like, like some poor peasant girl in a fairy tale?”
“That was… specific,” Ned said.
Catelyn folded her arms, but she was smiling. “Yes, you can go. On certain conditions.”
“Anything,” Sansa said immediately. “Everything.”
“You do all your homework without being reminded,” Catelyn said. “No arguments about bedtime. No trying to swap vegetables with Arya when you think I’m not looking.”
Arya made a noise of protest. “That’s not fair—”
“And,” Catelyn added, “you listen the first time you’re told something. No wandering off, no exploring on your own. The castle is still under construction. There will be parts that aren’t safe. If we say stay in the hall, you stay in the hall. If we say hold your brother’s hand—”
“I will glue myself to Robb,” Sansa said. “I will stitch us together. I will—”
“All right, all right.” Ned laughed. “You’ll behave like a Stark and not a wildling. That’s enough.”
“I can go,” Sansa whispered, more to herself than anyone. “I can really go.”
She flung herself at Catelyn. Her mother’s arms caught her automatically, warm and solid and familiar. Sansa buried her face in her shoulder, inhaling fabric softener and the faint scent of the lemon soap. Catelyn’s hand smoothed up and down her back.
“I knew this day would come,” she said quietly. “I just didn’t think you’d be quite so loud about it.”
Arya rolled her eyes. “You did.”
“I did,” Catelyn admitted.
Ned’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at the screen, frown deepening. “I need to take this,” he said. “Board call.”
He stepped into the hall, voice dropping low and serious. Sansa barely heard him. The invitation lay on the table like a piece of magic.
Catelyn nudged her shoulder. “Upstairs. There’s something I want to show you.”
Sansa scooped the card up and followed her, feet flying on the stairs. Bran abandoned his dragon to toddle after them until Arya scooped him up.
“Girls only,” Arya announced, shouldering him. “Right, Mom?”
“Right this second,” Catelyn said. “Five minutes.”
Sansa’s room sat at the end of the hall, across from Arya’s and next to the bathroom. The door was plastered with stickers and hand-lettered signs—NO BOYS ALLOWED underlined three times, and, beneath it in Robb’s scrawl, EXCEPT ROBB.
Catelyn opened the door and stepped aside to let Sansa pass.
Color hit her first. It always did.
Her room was a riot: fairy lights strung along the ceiling in mismatched colors, books stacked in precarious towers, a rainbow of throw pillows spilled across the bed. The curtains were pink on one side and green on the other; she’d refused to choose just one. Ribbons hung from the wardrobe door. A poster of an illustrated Winterfell—towering, impossible, with wolves the size of horses—took up half a wall. Plastic crowns and costume jewelry lay in a glittering heap on the dresser.
Under the window, a corkboard sagged under the weight of postcards, magazine cutouts, printed-out images from history sites—queens and warriors and knights in shining mail. She loved them all. She wanted to be all of them at once.
“I know it looks like color threw up in here,” she said, repeating something Arya had once declared with great disgust.
Catelyn’s gaze moved over the chaos with exasperated affection. “It looks like someone lives here,” she said. “That’s not a bad thing.”
She crossed to the wardrobe, opened it, and reached for something hanging in the very back. For once, Sansa hadn’t noticed it before. She realized with a jolt that her mother had done that on purpose.
When Catelyn turned around, Sansa forgot how to breathe.
The dress was blue. Not the pale, watery blue of her school uniform or the baby-blue of her winter coat, but a deep, clear blue that made her think of storybook oceans and the sky right before it turned to night. The fabric caught the light in tiny patterns—snowflakes embroidered in silver thread, scattered like stars. The waist was cinched with a darker band, the skirt full enough to swirl when she moved. The sleeves were long and fitted, the neckline modest but curved in a way that felt grown-up.
“Is that—?” Her voice came out in a squeak.
“This was mine,” Catelyn said softly. “Well. Part of it.” She smoothed a hand over the bodice. “Your grandfather commissioned it for a historical society ball when I was fourteen. I was supposed to look like something out of the old North. I felt ridiculous and magnificent in equal measure.”
“You must have looked like a princess,” Sansa breathed.
“I looked like a Tully pretending to be a Stark,” Catelyn said.
“But it worked well enough. After I married your father and became a Stark myself, I kept it carefully folded away. I always wondered if there would come a moment when a little girl of ours could step into it and make it her own.”
“For me?” Sansa whispered.
“For you,” Catelyn said. “I had Mrs. Poole take it in last month. Just in case your father and I decided you were ready.”
Sansa reached out, fingers brushing the skirt. The fabric was cool and smooth, like something out of a museum. “I’ll be careful,” she said automatically. “I won’t spill anything. I’ll stay away from Arya if she has dessert.”
“That would be wise,” Catelyn said, amused. “There’s more.”
She reached back into the wardrobe and brought out a cloak.
It was a shade darker than the dress, midnight blue instead of ocean, lined in soft wool. The outside was embroidered with tiny weirwood leaves and snowflakes in the same silver thread, clustered around the hem and edges like frost. A small clasp shaped like a direwolf’s head closed it at the throat.
Sansa’s vision blurred.
“You made this,” she said. It wasn’t really a question. She knew her mother’s stitches anywhere—small, neat, endlessly patient.
“I started it when the restoration plans for the castle became real,” Catelyn said. “Figured if the board was going to play at being lords and ladies, at least one of us should do it properly. And if my daughter insists on reading old sagas under the covers instead of sleeping…”
She lifted the cloak and swung it gently around Sansa’s shoulders. The weight settled over her like a hug. It smelled faintly of lavender and the wool soap from the laundry room.
Catelyn fastened the clasp, then stepped back.
Sansa turned once, slow, the hem whispering over the floor. The edges of the cloak flared. For a moment, in the reflection of her mirror—framed in mismatched stickers and glow-in-the-dark stars—she didn’t see a messy room or a little girl. She saw a figure out of the stories: a lady of Winterfell, cloak caught in the wind, snow in her hair.
Her hair. She lifted a hand to the copper-red waves tumbling over the cloak. “Do you think… do you think the old Sansa had hair like mine?” she asked quietly. “The one you named me after.”
“The Queen in the North?” Catelyn moved to stand behind her, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. “The stories don’t say. They say she was brave. That she kept going when everything in her wanted to stop. That she kept her people safe.”
Sansa studied the girl in the mirror. Her cheeks were pink with excitement. Her eyes were wide and bright. The cloak added something to her posture without her even trying; her shoulders straightened, her chin lifted.
“I could be brave,” she said.
“I know you can,” Catelyn answered softly. “But you don’t have to prove it at a gala. The most I’m asking is that you eat what’s on your plate and don’t talk to strangers without one of us nearby.”
“I won’t,” Sansa promised. “I’ll stay with you and Daddy and Robb. I’ll stay on your arm the whole time if you want. I just… I want to see it. The hall. The tapestries. The torches. I want to see how it feels to walk in a place that old and think about everyone who walked there before.”
Catelyn’s reflection smiled. There was pride in it, and something else—an ache Sansa was too young to name.
“You are so much like your namesake,” she said. “And like your grandfather. Always thinking in centuries.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s a very Stark thing,” Catelyn said. “Most days, that counts as good.”
She brushed a stray lock of hair behind Sansa’s ear. Her fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary, as if memorizing the shape of her.
“Can I keep it on?” Sansa asked. “Just for a while. To… practice.”
“You’ll overheat,” Catelyn said. “But you can keep the dress on for an hour. And no jumping on the bed in it, I mean it. Not even a little.”
“I would never,” Sansa said, already planning very careful, very dignified jumps the second Catelyn left the room.
Her mother gave her one last look, taking in the riot of color, the fairy lights, the cloak, the girl standing at the center of it all. “Tidy up a little before dinner,” she said. “If your room looks like this when the board visits on Saturday, your grandmother will have a heart attack.”
“I’ll tell her the color exploded,” Sansa said. “She can’t be mad at color. Color is happy.”
When she was gone, the room felt full and quiet at once.
Sansa moved closer to the mirror. The fairy lights cast little halos on the glass. Behind her, the bed was piled high with mismatched quilts; the posters and postcards on the walls made a patchwork of other worlds; her desk overflowed with markers and glitter glue and half-finished drawings of castles that never quite matched the ones in the books.
The cloak’s weight sat steady on her shoulders. The dress whispered when she turned.
“I’m going to the gala,” she told her reflection. “I’m going to see Winterfell.”
Outside, snow tapped gently against the window. Somewhere beyond the trees, the old castle waited—wrapped in scaffolding, hemmed in by modern safety codes and security lights, but older than any of them. Older than the foundation, older than the donors, older even than the stories in her books.
She spread her arms and let the cloak fall around her like wings.
For now, her world was color and light and the buzzing excitement of a dream about to come true.
Years from now, she would remember none of this. She would live in a white house with white walls and white curtains and no stickers on the doors. She would eat at a table where the silver never moved out of place and every candle stood exactly in the center.
But tonight, she was eight years old and almost singing with joy, in a room where color had exploded and been allowed to stay.
Downstairs, the clock chimed the hour.
Sansa turned in a slow circle, watching the cloak follow.
“Just wait,” she whispered to the castle beyond the glass. “I’m coming.”