Stalwart and Steady and True

There was a baseball game playing on the radio, a familiar one. Sunlight filtered through her eyelids and she cracked them open, glancing around. White walls, a counter, hospital bed, soft sheets, softer than she was used to. The scores of the baseball game…

Sansa looked closer. The room was clean, and she was alone. She had woken up alone. Panic flared through her. She was a Stark and Starks didn’t wake up alone, not in hospitals, not in the war. She swung her legs out of the bed and who had put her in a dress? She pulled herself out of the bed and made her way to the door. Before she could reach it, a woman walked through it. Sansa stopped short. The woman looked off. Hair too curly and long, brassier shaped wrong. And the game…

“Where am I?” Sansa asked, her voice hard.

“You’re in New York, in a recovery house,” the woman answered, her voice calm and smile gentle but still somehow off.

Sansa paused, taking it in. She’d been…she’d been with Arya, a fortress in the Arctic, there’d been a plane and Arya had-

“Where am I really?” Sansa asked, drawing herself up, pulling her muscles taught.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the woman was good, her smile still calm, but Sansa could see it twitch.

“That game is from 1941. I know. I was there,” Sansa said. She stepped towards the woman, whose smile finally fell.

“Sergeant Stark-“ the woman began and three armed men burst into the room. Sansa charged, throwing one into the wall. It broke easily, nothing more than drywall, and she threw the others out after him. Cursing the dress, Sansa leapt over the men and through the hole she’d made. The outside room was cavernous, more like a warehouse and unlike any army bunker she’d been in. She scanned the room quickly; no more armed men, no snipers, and one exit. She burst through it.

Tall glass windows and a crowded hallway. The clothing was unfamiliar- not a White Walker base, unlikely to be Allied either though. Side door, probable stairwell. She went through it. Four stories. She leapt the railing, landing soft and rolling with it. There was a door. It was locked, but weak enough to break through and then she could see the street outside.

Sansa ran through the glass doors and it was loud, so loud, outside. Cars sped down the street and she took off running. Flashing lights, honking, a heavy odor in the air- she ran until she found herself in a familiar place. It was Times Square, she’d know it anywhere, Brooklyn born and bred like she was, but how it could actually be- four huge black cars pulled up and surrounded her, men in all black filing out. She turned to run again, body tensed for action when-

“Sergeant Stark!” a voice called, and it was unmistakably military. It brought her to a halt and she turned, eyes scanning the crowd. She found the man who called to her- it was obvious- long black coat, eye patch, stood like steel, dangerous- but she kept looking beyond him. Others had filed out of the cars, dressed in all black with helmets on, guns drawn on her. Beyond that there were at least two others watching her dressed as civilians, all of them concealing weapons. Probably at least another three that she couldn’t see. She turned back to the man, keeping her body ready for action.

“At ease, soldier,” he said when he reached her. Sansa recognized it for the order it was but refused to follow it. He sighed when he noticed she hadn’t changed her stance. “Look,” he began, his voice sounding weary, “I’m sorry about that little charade back there but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

Sansa couldn’t control her breaths, they were heaving, her chest rising and falling. She was trying her best to quell the rising panic inside of her, to stamp down that intense unease, “Break what?” she bit out, her voice sharp.

The man sighed again, “You’ve been asleep, Sergeant.” He paused and Sansa’s heart stuttered. “For nearly 70 years.”

She stumbled back and her knees almost buckled. Her air rushed out of her and she clenched her fists. Sansa’s mind wanted to push it away, label it the impossibility that it should have been but that word had meant so little to her for the past four years that now…she looked around at the speeding cars, the garish advertisements, at Times Square that was Times Square but not her Times Square and-

Sansa forced herself to silence the whimper growing in her chest. Instead, she drew herself up, squared her shoulders.

“You going to be alright?” The man asked and Sansa wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the question.

“Yeah,” she answered, trying to ground herself. And then, the panic came back because what if-“The rest of us?”

Brann and Rickon and Robb and Arya. Were they- “The rest of the Howling Commandos?”

Sansa forced herself to nod, her throat a death grip around her voice.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant. You’re the last one.” It may have been kindness in his eye as he said it, but in that moment Sansa hated him.

**

“What are you going to do, when the war’s over?”

It was every reporter’s favorite question for the Howling Commandos, for Captain America. Robb always smiled, eyes down cast, just slightly self-depreciating: “Move on to the next fight, I imagine. Keep the world free.” That was the answer that always made the papers; the folks back home loved the idea of the Sentinel of Liberty carrying on, carrying his torch across the world.

Around their campfires, the answers went a little different. In the middle of nowhere, Austria this time, behind enemy lines, the five Starks, the Howling Commandos, answered the question.

“I’m gonna be a doctor.” Bran said. “Help find cures and vaccines. Just help people.”

“Park Ranger,” Rickon answered, shoulders tight. “Don’t much care where, so long as it’s quiet.” Sometimes Sansa thought that the war had hit him the hardest. It was easy to forget sometimes, during all the fighting, just how young he was.

“How about you, Robb? What are ya really gonna do?” Arya asked, head rolling in his direction.

“There’s some groups I want to meet with, people talkin’ about getting equal rights for folks. I want to help ‘em, if I can.” It made Sansa smile. Robb Stark, Captain America, carrying that torch for freedom, but maybe not quite in the way that the world expected.

“Sansa?” Bran asked, smile on his lips too.

“Oh, please. We all know what Sansa’s gonna do,” Arya broke in, flipping herself on her mat to look at her sister. “She’s gonna marry Willas, get a house in Jersey and pop out some kids. Hell, they’ll probably invite us over for barbeques.”

Sansa blushed because it was what she wanted, at least most of it: “Arya, I will never move to New Jersey and I’m offended that ya would even suggest somethin’ like that.” She and her siblings shared a grimace; they were New Yorkers to the bone.

“What about you, Arya? Any big plans?” Sansa asked. Her sister fell quiet, pulling out a knife, twirling it lazily. They all turned to look at her, each noting the shadow on Arya’s face. It’d been like that since they’d started finding the camps.

“Dunno,” she finally answered. “SSR might need me. Guess I’ll just stick around and see what comes next.” Arya said it with a feigned lightness, something that anyone who her knew her less, anyone not a Stark, wouldn’t notice.

It was a quiet night after that. Robb took first watch like he always did, his shield next him and the firelight casting its shadows. Sansa went into her tent, put the knife under her pillow and the Colt by the bed roll. Maybe she’d dream of Willas. She’d probably dream about the White Walker base though, about hard straps and a lab table, and the empty void. They were all she dreamed about now and it did nothing to quiet the small voice in her head, the one that believed that she would never get out the war, that she wasn’t going to have an after.

She hoped she’d dream of Willas.

**

Sansa had slit her first throat in 1942 behind a bombed out building in Paris. It wasn’t the first man that she’d killed, but it was the first one that got blood on her hands. She hadn’t even realized it until later when she was cleaning her knife back in their rented room and trying to remember when she had used it. Clinging to the porcelain toilet, Sansa vomited because she couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten, even for a moment, the slick way the blood had seeped between her fingers.

The next day, when she and Arya were picking off straggling White Walker agents in a dark alley, the ones who survived the frontal assault, Sansa made sure no blood got on her. She’d learned that it was hard to wash out.

**

“You and Arya shouldn’t be the ones doing this,” Robb whispered, and Sansa was sick of the old argument. “You shouldn’t have to go first, shouldn’t have to...” he trailed off, not willing to say the words.

Sansa turned to him, sliding her last knife into its sheath. “You can’t do the dirty work, Cap.” He had the image to preserve, but more than that, he had the ideals.

Arya stepped up beside her, quiet as the shadows around them. She put her hand on Sansa’s shoulder; she was ready.

“I worry about what this is doing to you two. What the war is-“ Robb tried to say before Sansa cut him off. “We’ll go in through the basement, clear the bottom floors as fast as we can. Once we locate the weapons’ hatch, Direwolf will blow the fuses. Soon as the lights cut, you three will charge in, round up what’s left.”

“But-“

“The mission is to capture Craster. All other objectives secondary,” Sansa continued, strapping down her boots.

“I know the mission!” Robb hissed, mindful of the need for quiet.

Sansa and Arya both turned to look at him. “Then do your part, Cap. We’ll do ours.” Their eldest brother opened his mouth again to argue, but stopped and gave a resigned nod.

“Commandos, get into position,” he ordered the rest of them, walking away to grab his shield.

“Don’t see much difference between slitting a man’s throat behind his back and shooting him in the face, anyway,” Arya muttered as they made their way into the woods. Silently, Sansa agreed.

**

He led her across the dance floor, a smooth path even in the crowded room. She’d gotten to wear her green dress and it was swishing around her knees. Willas couldn’t lindy hop, not with his leg, but she liked dancing with him anyway. Later, they’d sit in his car awhile and he’d kiss her, the moon bright over them, and she’d forget that they’d had to find a new dancehall because the old one hadn’t survived the most recent raid.

But for now, the shandy was delicious and she’d managed to get some time alone with her fella. The band wasn’t the best either, but they could carry a tune. Maybe the city was different, but Sansa supposed that dancehalls had to be something universal, whether they were in London or Brooklyn. Willas was laughing, his head thrown back and his eyes crinkled. Sansa smiled back and maybe it wasn’t as full as it used to be, but at least it was there.

**

There were seven more men on this level of the White Walker base. She had three minutes to clear it. Three knives, a garrote wire and her Colt pistol. One smoke bomb in case of emergency. Sansa took off down the corridor.

Three men in the passage. She threw two knives, the men fell. She had to disarm the third man before breaking his neck. She grabbed her knives. 45 seconds gone. Ran again. One man around the corner; she threw a knife in the hand that’d been reaching for his gun, pulled another across his throat. 90 seconds. Three men stationed in front of the prisoners’ ward. Three bullets. 30 seconds to disarm the bomb. 120 seconds. Clear.

There were 12 prisoners in the cell, most of them children. It made Sansa sick, looking at their wounds, at the way their eyes were hollow and their skin pale. There were needle marks in their arms and they were so similar to the ones that she’d gotten in ‘43 that bile rose in her throat and she had to force it down. When she moved towards the cell, the children backed away. Sansa looked at the lock; she could pick it but it’d just waste time. Instead she grabbed the iron bars and yanked, the hinges cracking and the cell door coming off. She tossed it aside.

“Do you speak English?” she asked the eldest looking child; a young woman who was maybe 16. The girl shook her head.

“Deutsch?”

The girl nodded.

Nodding her head, Sansa told them she was there to get them out. Robb, Arya and Rickon were clearing the rest of the base while Bran watched the perimeter through his scope. Sansa needed to clear the prisoners and then Rickon would set their own explosives. By then Arya would have hijacked the truck they’d seen out front and they could leave, blow the base and radio in. A simple rescue and clean up op.

The children followed her out and Sansa wished she could shield the youngest ones from the bodies she’d left in her wake. But they had been in a White Walker camp. They had seen worse. Sansa led them through the maze of corridors, up, up and out until she kicked the back door open, sunlight breaking in. Outside, she could see her sister in the cab of the truck, fiddling with the wires. Rickon was setting the last of the detonators. Robb came towards them, balancing a bulky piece of machinery on his shoulder; some White Walker tech for the SSR scientists to look at. Bran would be out in the forest somewhere waiting for pick up. Robb had given the all-clear, had radioed in. All they had to do was blow the base-

Sansa almost didn’t see it, a slight bit of movement off to her right. She turned- and then the children were screaming. Their bodies jerked, spasms shaking through them. She rushed towards them, feeling helpless, and behind her she heard the unmistakable sound of Captain America’s shield singing through the air. Then there was a dull thud that she could only hear over the sound of the screaming because of the serum in her veins.

The children dropped and Sansa fell to her knees beside the youngest; a small boy with dirty brown curls. A ringlet had fallen over his eyes. They were still open. She wanted to brush the hair back. She didn’t.

“Shit shit shit! I thought we were clear! We shoulda been clear!” Rickon roared, his anger breaking to the surface.

“Where the fuck did this guy come from!” Arya shouted and Sansa heard her sister leave the truck, run over in the direction of where she’d seen the movement. All the children had died with their eyes still open. Sansa knew that she’d have to wait before she could close them; it took hours before that was possible. Otherwise, they’d just pop back open.

The sound of a foot kicking a body, heavy. That was Rickon’s foot. A groan- that must have been the White Walker agent. The sound of a knife getting pulled from a sheath; Arya’s. Robb picked up his shield.

“Put the cuffs on him. He’ll come back with us.” Robb’s voice was heavy and tired. Sansa could hear how tired he was. He usually hid it better than this.

“Take him back! Cap, look at what he did. We oughta kill this fucker!” Rickon protested, the chaos in him rising up.

“Stand down, Wilding.” Robb’s voice was firm.

“Fuck that! This guy just killed those kids. They were just kids!”

“And we don’t know how he did it,” Robb responded, calm and commanding; his Captain’s voice.

“He’s holding a remote,” Arya interjected, her voice cold where Rickon’s was hot, where Robb’s was steel.

Sansa looked closer at the bodies and cursed under her breath for not noticing it sooner. Each of the children had a subcutaneous lump on their wrist. Steeling herself, Sansa took the little boy’s arm and dug a knife under the skin, digging out the object. It was some sort of conductor, she realized, meant to send electricity through the body. To punish them, she figured. To stop an escape. To stop them from answering any questions.

“We should kill him. You know we should, Cap.” A part of Sansa, a small part that she tried so hard to ignore, agreed with her youngest brother.

“We don’t just kill people. We take them in for questioning.”

“But-“

“That’s enough,” Sansa said, making her voice carry. She stood again, finally turning away from the children to face her family. “Cuff him and gag him, Direwolf. Cap’s right. He has answers that we need, now that we can’t ask the prisoners.” Arya nodded, pulling the reinforced handcuffs from her belt.

Sansa walked towards Robb, dropping the little device in his hand, blood still on it. Their eyes met and he nodded before pocketing it.

“Wilding, set the detonator. We’re going. We need to rendezvous with Crow and get to the pick-up.” Robb said brusquely, securing his shield on his back, once again picking up the piece of machinery.

“What about the-“ Rickon paused, stuttering over the word ‘children,’ “bodies?” he finished, voice going hard.

“We can’t take them. There’s no room for just bodies. We’ll notify command back at base,” Sansa spoke quietly, forcing her lip not to quiver.

Rickon looked like he wanted to fight it and even Robb paused before loading the tech in the truck. Neither of them said anything though and Arya just finished gagging their prisoner before hauling him up and pushing him towards their ride. Both she and Robb climbed in after him. Sansa turned to look at her youngest brother.

He stood tall, back straight and had a tension in his shoulders that shouldn’t be there for someone so young. He was holding the detonator like it could bring him salvation. It made Sansa’s heart ache for him and not for the first time, she wondered if her parents had been right to give him the serum when he was only 16, war be damned. He’d been eager though, to be like the rest of them. To be like Robb. She watched him, taller than all of them, broader than Robb even, and he looked so small, even after four years at war. Maybe especially because of those years.   

“Wilding,” she called softly, even if she wanted to call his name instead. He turned to her and she nodded towards the truck. He blinked at her before climbing into the front passenger seat. She followed him, getting behind the wheel. The back of the truck was silent. Sansa started the car and pulled out onto the dirt road leading back into the forest. Rickon took a breath. He pressed the detonator.

None of them flinched when the explosion came.

**

“You really gonna marry him, Sans?” Rickon asked as they danced. Sansa glanced over at Willas who was leaning against the bar, uniform impeccable. His smile was easy and his eyes unburdened.

She took a moment to answer: “You don’t think I should.”

Rickon spun her out and back, flipped her over his arm. The moves were practiced; precise but without any of the passion. He brought her around into a six count. “He doesn’t understand about the war.” Sansa nodded her head. “It doesn’t touch him, not when he’s doin’ just the research and logistics.”

Sansa looked back over at Willas. Their eyes met and he raised his whisky to her and smiled. She slipped one on and returned it. “He doesn’t have to understand it. He shouldn’t have to.”

“He has to understand you.” Rickon said, voice quiet and full of heavy meaning.

**

Private Rodriguez was sobbing, his guts spilling out. The mission had gone completely FUBAR and Sansa could hear Arya on the radio, trying to arrange an emergency evac. Private Rodriguez was howling and if he didn’t stop soon then the White Walkers were going to find them and the evac wouldn’t matter.

“Please!” he was screaming, again and again, even as Bran tried to stop the bleeding. Sansa knew it wasn’t going to work.

“White Walkers, 2 o’clock. Coming fast.” Rickon whispered, not even flinching when Private Rodriguez screamed again.

“We need to get out of here,” Robb whispered, glancing in the direction Rickon indicated. Sansa looked too, her enhanced vision allowing her to see the agents that were still far away but gaining.

"We’re not going anywhere, not with him like this,” Bran answered, working as fast as he could. Sansa could see the frenzy in his eyes and knew that, when this private died, it would be another death that he blamed himself for.

“They’re getting closer. No long range weaponry, standard White Walker gear.” Rickon reported.

“Evac three clicks from here, ready for immediate take off,” Arya said, stashing the radio in a pack. “We need to move before any White Walkers find it.”

“We can’t move him!” Bran said, too loud.

“Crow, he’s not going to make it,” Sansa said, moving away from Rickon’s side. She crouched beside Private Rodriguez and met his eyes.

His screams died down and Sansa could see the pain in his eyes, the pleading. “Please,” he whimpered.

“Okay,” Sansa whispered to him.

“Little Bird, what are you doing?” Bran asked, his voice bristling.

Sansa didn’t look away from the man. “Close your eyes, soldier,” Sansa said, putting on a gentle smile. “It’ll be over soon.” Private Rodriguez closed his eyes and she stroked his cheek before-

“What are you-“

Moving quickly, Sansa snapped the soldier’s neck.

“No!” Bran yelled, forgetting how close the White Walkers were getting. Sansa could feel all of her siblings looking at her, knew their eyes would be large and alarmed, all except for Arya’s. “He would have- I could have-“

Sansa rose after pulling off Private Rodriguez’s dog tags; “We need to move, now.” Robb looked at her a moment longer before shaking himself and walking away from them, and Rickon moved with him.

Sansa turned to join them before being shoved to her stomach when Bran tackled her to the ground. He yanked her around, raising his fist up to hit her. “I could have done it! I was going to save him! I could have done it!” He brought the fist down and Sansa let it hit her. The blow hit her hard and she knew the bruise would last for at least the night. “You can’t kill everyone!” He cried. Bran tried to swing again but then Robb was hauling him off of her, holding him back.

Rounding on Bran, Robb hissed, “We don’t have time for this. Those White Walkers are going to be here any minute and we need to move.” Quieter, he continued, “There was nothing you could have done.”

Sansa could see the fight drain out of her brother. His shoulders slumped and he let his head fall forward. Pushing herself off of the ground, Sansa turned away from her brothers. She’d done what she could to take the blame of Private Rodriguez’s inevitable death off of Bran’s shoulders. He couldn’t save everyone, even if he hadn’t realized that yet, even after all these years at war. Sansa wiped the blood off of her split lip, and pulled of the private's dogtags, refusing to look at his face. It'd be in her nightmares anyway.

Later, back at base, Sansa sat in her tent, not seeing the words of her book. She wasn’t seeing anything. Time slipped by and Sansa couldn’t make herself close her eyes. She’d tried to imagine Brooklyn and her favorite dancehall but she could only see the shell of a Paris bar. She’d tried to remember the way that Arya’s stew smelled in their old apartment, but kept getting it confused with the burned smell of the coffee they made out in the field.

Distantly, Sansa registered the tent flap open, heard the barely-there sounds of Arya coming in from the briefing. Her sister made noise as she moved around the tent, something that she did on purpose. Both Arya and Sansa had learned how to move silently. It had become a default. Now, though, Arya was doing Sansa the kindness of letting her know she wasn’t alone.

After settling herself down on her own cot, Sansa’s sister turned to look at her. “You did the right thing, ya know.” She said it quietly and Sansa was shocked that Arya had spoken at all. Sansa just nodded. She had done what was necessary. Bran would realize that eventually. “He just wants to save the whole world,” Arya continued. “Always has.”

“He shouldn’t be here,” Sansa spoke up. “He should be at school, learnin’ how to be a doctor.”

“Yeah,” Arya whispered. “But he ain’t. He’s here in this shithole with the rest of us.”

“It’s where he thinks he needs to be. He wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, even if he should be. Same with Rickon. And Robb’s been fightin’ for people his whole life. There was no way he’d sit this war out.”

“You know you shouldn’t be here either, right?” Arya asked quietly.

Sansa turned her eyes towards her sister, surprised at the question. She’d never thought about it. “I got Ma and Pa’s serum, just like all of you.”

“You were never made for war,” Arya pushed on. “Not like, not like me. You never wanted the fight.”

Sansa couldn’t argue with that. But when the time came, and her parents offered her the serum, Sansa had known it was the right thing to do. She may not have wanted to fight, but she did want to help. “No, I didn’t,” Sansa agreed. “But I had to do it. We all did, whether we should be here or not.”

Arya fell silent and Sansa thought that might be the end of it. She and her sister had always been close, first from having to put up with three brothers and then getting that apartment together in Fulton Landing. Now, they worked together in the shadows, had become close enough that most of the time they didn’t even need words. It made it easy for Sansa to see the cracks in her sister, being so close. The war had touched all of them in different ways, but it had hardened Arya’s smiles and made her vicious in a way that hurt Sansa to see.

“You know you can come back from this, don’t you?” Sansa asked.

“No,” Arya said, voice barely audible. “But you can.”

“But-“ Sansa tried to argue, but Arya had already turned her back.

“G’night, Sans.”

 Sansa knew her sister well enough that she could recognize that Arya wasn’t going to say anything else. There were words stashed inside Sansa, ones she wanted to say to each of her siblings. She wanted to tell Robb that he couldn’t win every fight, wanted to tell Bran that he couldn’t save everyone. She wanted to tell Rickon that his rage wasn’t going to help anything. She wanted to tell Arya that anyone could be broken.

But Sansa didn’t think she could say those words to them, not yet, no matter how much she wanted to. Because the truth was, they were all of them drowning.

**

Arya kicked her loose and Sansa felt herself fall. Arya hung on to the plane and she had said there was a bomb on it. Sansa had heard the ticking, even over the roar of the wind.

“Arya!” the name ripped itself from Sansa’s gut and the plane flew higher and she fell lower.

The wind pushed up against her, hair blowing up like the tendrils of a flame and a part of her wanted to laugh; Sergeant Sansa Stark, the Little Bird, trying to fly. But Arya wasn’t falling after her. Arya had hung on and there was a bomb and Arya had said-

The plane exploded above her and time slowed. Sansa fell and fell, too far below the wreck to see her sister. Too far below to see anything but the familiar orange swells of an explosion. She kept falling and Arya had said-

“You’re the one who can come back, Sansa.” And kicked her loose from the plane.

The water hit her hard, hit her cold.

**

She woke up to the sound of a baseball game.