Oathkeeper

Chapter 6: The Sibling Set Up

Brienne rose from her bed this morning still as gloomy as the last several ones. Her encounter with Lady Sansa invaded her mind every time it tried to idle. She'd been wanting to talk to the girl for a while now, but anytime she works up the courage Sansa is being pulled in another direction. Jon was expected to be back with a truce and enough dragon glass for everyone to be effective in the fight against the dead days ago, but no one has heard a word. Not a single raven received by the raven keeper, and it was starting to shake the North. The people were infuriated that their newly appointed King went South without a word, and has yet to return. The people of Winterfell were going hungry and if Sansa didn't do something about it quickly she would lose her army and her people.

So Brienne kept a grave distance between her and the redhead, leaving her distracted of course. Pod expected her at the sparring quarters at sunrise, but the sun had been shining for a while this morning. She arrived with her shoes undone, her sword dragging through the mud, and bags darker than the Red Sea. Pod noticed things were off with his Knight, but he knew she wouldn't wish to talk about such a thing.

"Apologies Podrick. I overslept" Brienne sat on the boxes, bending over to tie her shoes.

"No worries, I've been practicing anyways" He assured her it was no big deal.

Brienne lifted her sword up, preparing to fight with other thoughts in mind. She held dominance over Pod because she was a stronger fighter than him, but this sort of distraction was dangerous. It was making her slow, disrupting her ability to predict moves like a misplaced satellite. She knocked Pod onto his back without breaking a smile, her moves had no emotion at all. Sansa made her way across the stairway, not realizing Pod and Brienne were outside her sparring. She froze making awkward eye contact with the blonde knight and her squire. Luckily, Arya approached Sansa with a much more pressing issue, freeing her of the distraction for a little while longer.

"We need to talk" Arya grabbed Sansa's arm and pulled her back deeper into the stairwell.

Sansa was startled by Arya's aggression as she turned to face her with her eyebrows furrowed. Arya fumbled around in her pockets before pulling out a piece of paper. She handed the piece of paper to her sister and waited for her to read it.

"Arya, where did you get this?" Sansa ripped the piece of paper up.

"You asked Mom and Robb to bend the knee to Cersei and her inbred son. Are you mad?" Arya argued with her sister.

"I- I didn't- They forced me to!" Sansa defended herself.

"Oh I'm sure they forced poor little Sansa into protecting her beloved Jeoffrey" Arya didn't let up.

"I was a child, Arya. I thought it was going to help Father" Sansa began to tear up.

"Yeah and look how well that turned out" Arya got in the last word before storming off.

Sansa was left embarrassed from their very public confrontation. She tried her best to shake off any feeling of responsibility about her fathers death. That sense is what crippled Sansa in the first place, it weakened her against Jeoffrey, who weakened her for Ramsay. All of the terrible nights with those men flooded to the front gates of Sansa's mind. She felt her throat closing up, as the tears streamed down her face. A flash of Ramsay touching her body came first, then her fathers head on a pike, then the news brothers death. So much pain, death, suffrage, it was something that Sansa wasn't quite able to escape.

Ser Davos knocked on Sansa's bedroom chamber. She shot up from her bed and wiped her tears away. As much as she was struggling with all the traumatic things that happened, she knew they were facing current issues in the North, ones that could potentially be fatal. Ser Davos informed her that they didn't have enough food to feed everyone in Winterfell tonight, now she was really stressed.