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janie_tangerine“So… here we are,” Tyrion clears his throat as he sits at the table in the main hall. Sansa is the only one still sitting there, eating a lemoncake, and he’s relieved when she sends a small smile his way.
“Here we are,” she agrees, and he’s glad that she doesn’t sound as sorry as he had imagined she would have.
“I, uh.” Right now, he wishes he had the right words to say what he has to, except that they seem to have failed him when they never used to. He hates this. He really hates thing.
“My lord,” she says, and it doesn’t sound empty, at least, “you can speak. You know I don’t hold what happened the first time against you now, don’t you?”
“It’s… hard to believe it,” he says. “I mean, I agreed to it as much as you did, but I wouldn’t blame you if -”
“You said it,” she says, “and you were kind to me. You didn’t have to be. I - I appreciate it, in retrospective. Maybe I hadn’t then.”
“It’s been a long time,” he says. “Maybe… maybe I kind of did resent you for it, back in the day, but it was unfair of me. You were too young and I was… too angry, I think. It wasn’t the right time. It wouldn’t have been the right time for anyone else, probably.”
“It was,” Sansa nods. “But I just wanted to tell you… that I wouldn’t have accepted the arrangement if I had been wholly against it.”
Tyrion almost lets fall to the ground the lemoncake he had reached to take out of complete surprise.
“You… are not?”
Sansa shakes her head. “I see the reasoning behind it,” she explains, and - well. It had been both Davos Seaworth and Jon Snow brokering it, but it had made sense. The entire war had started with Starks and Lannisters fighting each other, so it only makes sense that they end it with a Stark and a Lannister marrying each other…
Except that Jaime isn’t the heir anymore and he had married Lady Brienne on the Quiet Isle anyway, so they couldn’t certainly ask him to marry any Stark girl, and Arya Stark was already set on King Robert’s bastard, and he is the heir, and -
Well.
He certainly couldn’t marry Jon Snow now, could he?
“And if there is something I learned in these years,” she goes on, “is that gallant and kind men don’t necessarily have your… nephew’s looks, as I used to think once. I think I did learn to see behind that.”
Tyrion really, really wishes his heart wasn’t beating this hard.
“And,” she adds, with a small, sincere smile, “I really don’t think that you are like him at all.”
“I should hope,” Tyrion chokes out, even if maybe the moment called for something more… poetic, he supposes.
Gods, he’s so over in his head. He’s so over in his head.
But he came here to tell her something else, too.
And oh, he will.
***
“I should, hope,” he says, not quite looking at Sansa, and she kind of wishes he did, if anything because if they start on this foot…
“My lord -”
“I think,” he says, and now he does look at her, mismatched eyes meeting hers, “that if we want to start this new endeavour better than the old, maybe we should drop titles. If you’d like.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Tyrion,” she says, deciding that she quite likes how that sounds, “you definitely are not and I have seen enough of the both of you to know. And was there any other reason you searched me out not even a day before we are to wed again?”
“Yes, actually,” he nods, then he looks back up at her. “I just wanted to say that - the first time we weren’t good for each other, and we established that, but I’m - I’m better now, and my father and my sister aren’t in the picture, and I know I can be better than I was to you. So I just wanted to tell you that this time I will do my best to do right by you. And I wish that the first time hadn’t been… the way it was.”
Sansa nods, ignoring the lump in her throat, and she tentatively reaches forward, touching his hand.
“Thank you,” she says, “I - I also wish that it had been different. And I know you will be better. I can see that. For what it’s worth, I can tell you that this time I know the circumstances and no one is forcing me, and I can see that you’re a good man. And I think we could have a good marriage… now. So… well. Tomorrow I will kneel when you put your cloak on me.”
He drops the lemoncake on the table, his fingers twitching under hers before he turns them and tentatively tangles them with hers.
“Thank you,” he chokes out, and when he looks again at her he looks like he’s about to cry, and then he wipes his eyes with his free hand before squeezing hers just a bit and getting off the chair, moving to stand in front of her.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “if I could take a page from my brother’s book, I would be glad to take yours, but I suppose politics ask otherwise.”
“Maybe,” Sansa replies, slowly, her heart beating faster at the suggestion, “you might take it later. Unless you’re no knight of flowers in the bedroom anymore?”
He laughs at that, and she thinks he likes how it sounds.
“Sansa,” he says, and he does look quite handsome in the moonlight now that he looks at her like that, “that certainly hasn’t changed.”
“Then I look forward to finding out,” she smiles, and -
She knows she means it, and when she leans down to kiss his cheek and bides him goodnight before standing up, she thinks his small, sincere smile is really quite lovely.
And she thinks she’s quite looking forward to tomorrow.
