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Howling Winds (Gift of the Woolly Howl)

Summary:

Sansa gets pulled out the Moon Door by her aunt's grasping hands. Falling to her death Sansa is surprised to wake in an uncommonly uncomfortable bed in a place where dragons roamed the skies. Unlike the Targaryens of generations past.

Fire may burn but so does ice.

For a moment it was as if the direwolf was there in the room, looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing. She had been dreaming, she realised. Lady was with her, and they were running together, and… and… trying to remember was like trying to catch the rain with her fingers. The dream faded, and Lady was dead again.

If Lady was here, I would not be afraid.

“Every flight begins with a fall” “choose. Fly or die.”

Sansa wakes expecting to be reunited with her family only to be severely disappointed and increasingly distressed.

Chapter Text

Howling Winds(Gift of the Woolly Howl)

 

 

SANSA

 

 1



All patchy memories, clouded in fear. She remembers how it happened. It started with an unwanted kiss and then her aunt Lysa. A madly jealous woman who could not tell when she was being played for a fool by a deeply ambitious man; a man that had stolen a kiss from Sansa as she mourned her home and played at making castles in the snow.  

 

Remembers her aunt’s summons. How shrill and demanding and accusing her voice had been. Sansa had thought she was to be scolded for causing the young Lord Robert’s upset.

 

“Open the door,” Lysa commanded. “Open it, I say. You will do it, or I'll send for my guards.”

 

If I do as she says, she will let me go. Sansa grabbed one of the bronze bars, yanked it loose, and tossed it down. The second bar clattered to the marble, then the third. She had barely touched the latch when the heavy wooden door flew inward and slammed back against the wall with a bang. Snow had piled up around the frame, and it all came blowing in at them, borne on a blast of cold air that left Sansa shivering. She tried to step backward, but her aunt was behind her. Lysa seized her by the wrist and put her other hand between her shoulder blades, propelling her forcefully toward the open door. Aunt Lysa had raved about her family and Lord Baelish.

 

Sansa retreated another step. "My mother?"  

 

"Yes, your mother, your precious mother, my own sweet sister Catelyn. Don't you think to play the innocent with me, you vile little liar. All those years in Riverrun, she played with Petyr as if he were her little toy. She teased him with smiles and soft words and wanton looks, and made his nights a torment."  

 

"No." My mother is dead, she wanted to shriek . She was your own sister; and she's dead. "She didn't. She wouldn't."  

 

Beyond the Door was white sky, falling snow, and nothing else.  

 

"They all tried to take him from me. My lord father, my husband, your mother ... Catelyn most of all. She liked to kiss my Petyr too, oh yes she did."  

 

She tried to wrench free, but her aunt's fingers were digging into her arm like claws.  

 

Lysa gave her another shove, and Sansa shrieked. Her left foot broke through a crust of snow and knocked it loose. There was nothing in front of her but empty air, and a waycastle six hundred feet below clinging to the side of the mountain.  

 

“Don't!” Sansa screamed. “You're scaring me!”  

 

All of Sansa's resolve had withered in the face of her aunt's hysteria. Lysa Arryn was frightening her more than Queen Cersei ever had.  

 

"He's yours, my lady," she said, trying to sound meek and contrite. "May I have your leave to go?"  

 

“No, you may not!”

 

It was then that Lord Petyr, known as Littlefinger, had arrived as her aunt was about to throw her from the Moon Door. Sansa’s unwanted saviour twice over.

 

“She's a child, Lysa. Cat's daughter. What did you think you were doing?”  

 

She hadn’t been a child in a painfully long time. Not since Joffrey had her fathers head removed on the steps to the Sept of Balor. Or perhaps when Lady was taken from her. No, She thought, I haven’t been a child since before leaving Winterfell. A woman flowered and wedded. She was not so young anymore. 

 

Her aunt Lysa threw herself into Littlefinger's arms, sobbing. As they hugged, Sansa tried to crawl from the Moon Door on hands and knees to wrap her arms around the nearest pillar.

 

She could feel her heart pounding. There was snow in her hair and her right shoe was missing. It must have fallen. She shuddered her hands grasping for the pillar almost within reach. The pull of the winds from the Moon Door held her back. Though it felt less like wind and more like an unseeable force willing her back.
Littlefinger let Lysa cry against his chest for a moment, then put his hands on her arms and kissed her lightly.  

 

“My sweet silly jealous wife,” he said, chuckling. “I've only loved one woman, I promise you.”  

 

Lysa Arryn smiled tremulously. “Only one? Oh, Petyr, do you swear it? Only one?”  

 

“Only Cat.” He gave her a short, sharp
shove.  

 

Lysa stumbled backward, her feet slipping on the wet marble. Her hands grasped for any kind of purchase. 

 

Sansa's heart dropped to her feet when she felt something clamp onto her right ankle (not having been able to crawl far enough away from the Moon Door), and yank her away from that pillar just out of reach. The strange force that felt like ghostly hands shoved her shoulders back; the action caused Sansa to smack her chin on the marble before following her aunt into the Stranger’s arms. And then she was gone.  

 

She never screamed. She had blacked out briefly and for the longest time there was no sound but the wind. Screaming, no, howling in her ears. But Sansa could have sworn, as she went over the edge, she heard Littlefinger scream in rage or fear mayhap despair. It was hard to tell as one plummets to their death after their own aunt tries(and succeeds) in pulling you down with her.  

 

Still, screaming would not have done her any good, it would not be heard by any with the wind as unforgiving and loud as it was. She could do nothing but brace herself for the inevitable impact. Hands splayed out in front of her waving madly in a panic. Aunt Lysa was nowhere to be seen. Sansa was certain the mad woman had already reached the perilous bottom after she had kicked her off.  

 

I can see them again , she thought. I'm coming, Father, Mother, Robb, Bran, Arya, Little Rickon. Lady, I will see you soon; with that Sansa closes her eyes and accepts her fate with a smile only to snap them open when there is a sudden change in pressure and her ears pop as she continues to fall.  

 

The air is warmer. Not by much, but it was noticeable. But this time as she looked about, eyes teary from the wind, there were no craggy rocks and mountains to fall upon below but the vast sea of deep blue-green. Yet, the peculiar change of scenery did not change her situation. She was still falling to her death.  

 

Before she met the water her fall was halted abruptly just over the water's surface, jolting her body in a tight grip stealing the air from her lungs; the spray of salt water stung her cheeks. After the very brief pause the wind screamed in her ears once more, though now it was whipping about her head as if she were racing a horse. Her eyes were squeezed shut in her terror.  

 

Something had grabbed her.  

 

Instead of falling to my death I am to be eaten alive! Sansa thought with dispair. No doubt like the direwolves of the North, griffins of the Eyrie weren't so extinct or mythical, just wiser to man and she was about to become this one's supper. Or worse perhaps it was a dragon! Nevermind the obvious change in geography. There was no logic in any of this. Then again, falling to your death doesn't leave one with many wits on the way down.  

 

The black griffin or dragon creature that carried her made a deep purring hum noise and Sansa was met with two great big green cat eyes that peered at her curiously upside down as its claws held her in a firm grip. It stared at her with a gummy upside down smile and what looked to be a horned helmet in its jaws and Sansa stared back fearfully with a silent scream on her lips. The wind had stolen her voice.


 

Might be it had been the events of recent weeks finally catching up to her lack of sleep. More likely it was the black beast with wings itself that carried her away in its claws; only to later swap cargo with the hairy-looking(perhaps they were feathers?) larger grey beast flying beside it as Sansa got to be too much for the long trip back to Berk. The thought of being eaten had terrified Sansa so much she fainted.  

 

2

 

She awoke all at once, every nerve atingle. Gasping for breath her movements briefly constricted from the blankets she was wrapped up in. For a moment she did not remember where she was. She had dreamt that she was falling or might it have been flying. There had been wings and green eyes. Black wings. That then turned grey. Gliding silently through the air, above open water or craggy stone. Freeing her hands she felt her face and body to assess if everything was still intact. When she found it was, she released a breath of relief; it was just a dream. A horrible; terribly real seeming night terror. She was not flying nor falling. She was dreaming. Everything was fine. She was alive.  

 

She wasn't dead.

 

Sansa went to snuggle beneath her covers once more when her eyes caught the unfamiliar surroundings of her chambers and the stiff uncomfortable hard feeling of her bed. Only it was not her humble chambers in the Eyrie that she shared with her maid. Nor was it the cramped space she had stayed in the Fingers or Maegor’s Holdfast in King’s Landing and it can't have been her childhood chambers in Winterfell as that had been burnt to the ground along with the rest of the castle most likely and she hadn't seen it in years. 

 

A thought struck her then. I should be dead.

 

None of what she saw was familiar to her. Nor did her circumstances make any sense. The walls arched overhead as if it were the overturned belly of a large ship; both the walls and structure of the building's interior were all wooden and sturdy. The itchy thin woollen bed cover that acted as her blanket was well used and faded brown from perhaps the red it might have been. (A feather bed with feather pillows would have been a welcome comfort to Sansa in this strange place) To the right of the bare hard wooden bed frame was a small table with an unlit candle and a wooden cup filled with water sitting atop it. To the left was a desk cluttered with parchment and drawings and leather bound books with strange designs of contraptions, that vaguely resembled fish fins, plastered on the wall above it. The room smelled of embers and ash or burnt coals.  

 

Would that mean it was all real? Did I truly fall out the Moon Door? Had I truly been in the claws of a griffin. No, there were scales… Was it a dragon? Sansa thought, a spike of fear shot through her and she peered about her surroundings again, taking it all in properly.  

 

At the foot of the bed was a burnt jagged stone slab. The Chamber was really hardly a chamber at all as bare as it was. The sturdy looking door to the room was closed. Hopefully unbarred. Else Sansa did not know what she would do after being held hostage twice(though she was certain Lord Petyr would spin it differently, Sansa knew that is what she was, a piece in a game to be bartered off at the right moment for the right price) she was leery of a repeat for the third time. There was a small window with a hatch that she could use as an escape route if the door failed… though there was no telling how sheer the drop would be if she chose to do so.

 

To survive an ordeal such as falling to her death from a mountain top, did not mean it would happen for a second time, that it had happened at all the first time; Sansa believed she was rather unfortunate with her luck believing the recent turn of events to be Divine punishment for her family’s deaths and Lady’s too. The gods hadn't seen fit to reunite her with her loved ones, as they had done to all of her family before her. It isn't fair, Sansa thought with petulance ignoring the voice of Littlefinger in her ear that tsked and his deceptive visage joined his mocking voice his slimy smirk plastered on his bearded lips “life is not a song sweetling, someday you will learn that to your sorrows”

 

When thrown into the path of the Stranger it unkindly swerved around her, as if she had Grey Scale often taking great efforts to avoid her. 

 

She was all alone in the world now stuck in an unfamiliar place with an uncommonly uncomfortable feather and strawless-less bed and yet still alive after plummeting to her death. Caught in the claws of a fabled griffin or perhaps even some other mythical creature like a giant bat or dragon.

 

  I am not going back to sleep, Sansa realised. My head is all tumult. Curiosity getting the better of her senses Sansa threw back the blankets, reluctantly pushed her lumpy pillow away, and shifted her weight to the edge of the bed to stand. She went to the window, and opened the hatch, half expecting to see the snow covered Eyrie. Instead of being met with snow falling on the Eyrie Sansa viewed unfamiliar lands. 

 

Outside the flakes drifted down as soft and silent as memory. 

 

Was this what woke me once more? Sansa recalled events similar to these leading up to her dance in the howling winds of the Moon Door. She repressed a shudder. Forcing those memories aside in favour of the ones she had reminisced about before that fateful event.

 

The last she had seen of Winterfell’s snow was the day she'd left it. With Arya and her father and the King’s retinue. 

 

That was a lighter fall than it had been in the Eyrie and lighter still than this, she remembered. Robb had melting flakes in his hair when he hugged me, and the snowball Arya tried to make kept coming apart in her hands.  

 

It hurt to remember how happy she had been that morning. Hullen had helped her mount, and she'd ridden out with the snowflakes swirling around her, off to see the great wide world. 

 

I thought my song was beginning that day, but it was almost done.

 

Already the snowfall lay thick upon the grounds below, blanketing the grass, though here there weren't many shrubs or statues to be blanketed with white and weighing snow down the branches of the trees, unlike the Eyrie(which had a garden containing both statues and shrubs that were coated in snow). She saw snow covered hilltops filled with odd boat shaped houses, with animal figureheads above the doors and slopes with exuberant children cloaked in furs tumbling down them on rounded shields giggling and screaming in delight and a few of age with herself engaging in similar activities. The sight took Sansa back to cold nights long ago, in the long summer of her childhood. It made her heart ache with the memory of all she had lost in the past three years.

 

 Her chin throbbed; it was aching from smacking the marble of the room that held the Moon Door.

 

 It’s likely to bruise from a blow as hard as that.

 

What she wouldn’t give to go back to before they had ever left Winterfell if only for a moment, just to grab her younger self and shake her shoulders and say; “Don’t go you idiot! You’ll lose everything. Lady will die. Father will die. And Mother and Robb and Bran and Rickon. They’ll all die and Theon will betray us and Arya will leave you. Jeyne will leave you. If you leave; Winterfell will burn and you’ll marry the Imp! Don’t go!” but the Gods would not trade anything she has to offer for such a chance. 

 

No, instead they’ll shove her out an ancient execution door to plummet thousands of miles to her death before sending one of their companions to fetch her to some place far away from her homelands. At least here she didn’t have to pretend to be Lord Littlefinger’s bastard daughter ‘Alayne Stone’. Nor did she have to be Tyrion’s disgraced wife: ‘Sansa Lannister’; “The Traitor’s daughter and Sister.” She could be Sansa Stark again; eldest daughter of Eddard Stark and Catelyn Stark of House Tully. Princess of the North. A Stark of Winterfell. Perhaps no longer. No one here is likely to recognise her as such. She’d be no better than the Beggar Prince and his sister had been in Essos. A foreigner in foreign lands with nothing more than the clothes on her back and her word.  Perhaps not even that, she rubbed her jaw and winced.

 

 She remembers her husband then. When Tyrion had inquired as to what she was praying for, she remembers telling him she didn't pray, not anymore, she only came to the godswood for peace, it was the only place in the Red Keep where no one would bother her. The only place she felt safe. Tyrion wasn’t an intolerable man, but neither did Sansa love him. He was fond of the Targaryens and their dragons. He kept trying to know her beyond her courtesies, but that was all she had to protect herself with after Sandor left… She should have left with him, when he offered to take her away he would have kept her safe. She should have jumped overboard with the two men who’d perished on the Merling King’s voyage to the Fingers. There were many things Sansa regrets not doing differently. Lying to the King to protect Joffrey over Arya was the worst of them. 

 

If I hadn’t lied maybe Lady wouldn’t have died. Maybe Arya wouldn’t hate me enough to leave me behind. Everyone around her had believed her sister to be dead for the longest time. But the thought never sat right. Arya was a fighter, she wasn't as weak willed and ladylike as Sansa was. She was alive, somewhere. They'd never see eachother again. Of that Sansa was certain, no matter how much she might wish otherwise.

 

Where the white winds blow and the snows fall, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives… but the pack broke and died anyway.

 

Her fingers itched to sew something to memorialise her family. So she wouldn’t forget them. She’s already forgotten what her father sounded like. It won’t be too long before she forgets his face too. She didn't want to forget him. Or any of them. Seeing no sewing needles or embroidery hoops in this very boyish and plain room Sansa seats herself at the small desk and invites herself to use the parchment and strange charcoal pens; the parchment is thicker than she's used to and the charcoal smudges with the heels of her palms. But still Sansa is determined to fix her family onto something before they are gone from her memory forever. At least until she has the materials required to stitch their likeness into something more permanent. Or paint them.

 

 3

 

Time passes quickly as Sansa exhausts the charcoal pen nib with trial and error and the exuberant cries from the window have faded out in the background and the daylight dims. 


So far, the drawing has her family as whole as they had been before they had left Winterfell with the beginnings of Jon Snow and Ghost off to the right. She could not forget him either, he was always kind even when she was cruel to him. 

 

It was difficult to do the faces with such a broad nib to work with. The eyes and facial features mostly consisted of lines and some dots, ears were mostly hidden by hair, except for baby Rickon who had little to no hair; his ears were small half circles. Shaggydog curls at his feet, or well mother’s feet, since she holds Rickon. Bran was to her left with his unnamed direwolf in his arms and Arya to Mother’s right closer to Jon. Father was beside Robb and Grey Wind who stood a little behind their mother. Sansa also drew Lady next to her Father sitting primly with her bow and Nymeria flopped over Arya’s feet, tongue lolling out of her mouth staring up at her sister. Sansa even added the helmet Arya had worn. But now with the picture finished did Sansa realise she had left herself out. 

 

Wet spots appeared on the parchment and only then did Sansa realise she was crying.

 

A door could be heard, in the near distance, shutting and Sansa realises the hovel’s residents have returned as she strains to listen to the hushed voices and feet padding on the wooden floor-boards of the building. Her heart thumps loudly in her chest, the normal sounds are soon joined by a more familiar deep rumbling purring hum, Sansa freezes at that particular disturbance, followed by an exasperated sounding person and suddenly she realises she is meant to be asleep, she scrubbed the tears from her face with a sniffle. Scrambling up from the desk some lace up snow boots that must have been there the moment she arrived, however, were in the way and Sansa fell with a loud thud. 

 

The voices hush and the footsteps or step thunk noises speed up and Sansa notes there must be stairs outside the room as she quickly stands to seat herself on the edge of the bed frame. 

 

“Stay out here Bud, we don't want to scare her. She might not talk if you’re in the room with us.” Sansa thinks she hears an almost affronted warble from beyond the door, and the decidedly young male voice replies in an attempt to comfort the black… creature, Sansa decided, that had stopped her descent and what would have been a grizzly dip into the ocean. Her memories of the fall resurfaced. 

 

“Yeah I know Bud, but look, Toothless… it will be easier on her if you’re not here. We don’t even know for sure if the Woolly Howl is hers or not. Just Please stay out here until I'm done talking. Alright?” The boy, ( he sounds like Robb had before we left Winterfell, she thought privately, youthful and awkward and innocent) was placating the scaled beast and plucking up the courage to enter what was probably his own chambers to ask her questions. 

 

Frowning at the thought of being impolite or discourteous to her host/s Sansa speaks up.

 

 “You may enter my lord, I shan’t bite.”

 

This causes pause once again and Sansa swears she can hear a faint warbling chuff noise from down stairs, evidently the beast is laughing at its master and Sansa hides a smile behind her hand as the door opens. 

 

She lets her eyes roam the figure of the boy starting with his boots… or boot singular, were she Arya she would have made a crude comment on his missing limb or the intricate replacement he has attached at the knee. He wore a leafy green tunic with a fur vest over the top of it and atop the mop of dark auburn hair was the strange horned helmet Sansa recalls seeing in the mouth of the toothless Griffin. Then she trails her eyes back down his face to meet his nervous but no less vibrant green eyes. Kind green eyes, so unlike any of the Lannisters.

 

“uh-I-uh… hey. Hi! Hi-yes hello. Uh. You’re Hiccup, it's nice to meet me.” Sansa giggled, her grief forgotten for the moment, and the teen, she guessed he was of an age with her, flushed red stumbling over his words. “Wait no! Uh-I meant Hi I’m Hiccup. It's uh-nice to meet you.”

 

Sansa moves to stand, dropping into a courtesy and smiling demurely at Hiccup, he looks like… Theon would, if he were shorter and skinnier like Arya and if his hair was auburn and eyes green. 

 

“Pleasure to meet you, Lord Hiccup, I am Lady…” Sansa paused her smile dropping for the briefest of moments before reforming brighter than before but less true, Hiccup didn't seem to catch it, “I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell. I thank you for caring for me in my hour of need,” she said instead. Reminding herself that a title does not endear her to people, it distances them.

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