Chapter Text
Later, she will often hear them say they met around Christmastime, at the day of the winter solstice. It definitely sounds very romantic, and roughly speaking it is true, but it’s not accurate. Shireen hates inaccuracies. When she hears them tell the story this way, she fights the urge to correct them. Yes, it was around Christmastime, and yes, it was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. But they didn’t meet then for the first time. More like they met again. Properly. They had known each other for years – all her life, half of his. And it was at her brother’s twelfth birthday party. How could they omit that?
It’s their story, and they can tell it the way they like it. But it’s her story too. And she can tell it the way she knows it.
//
Her father turns off the car engine but doesn’t get out of the car immediately. He sits rigidly in his seat, and from the rear-view mirror she can see he’s scowling more than usual. She wrinkles her nose, secretly glad she’s not the only one who feels like they don’t really have any business being here. The present sits in her lap, wrapped in Christmas-themed paper. She has chosen it herself and feels nervous about it – she hates picking presents for people she hardly knows.
“Are you ready?” her father asks grimly, looking at her through the mirror. She nods, even though she wishes they had stayed home, where he would do some work and she could continue her book. Perhaps if he didn’t have too much work to do, they could do a puzzle together later. But no, they had to spend the next few hours feeling super awkward.
Catelyn is the one to answer the door. Light and laughter pour out from inside the house, and she makes Shireen think that she’s one of the most beautiful mums she has seen – youthful, but soft-looking, with perfect hair and warm eyes.
“Stannis, we’re so happy you came!” she says with a bright smile as she steps to the side, to let them in. “Shireen, you’ve become a proper young lady, haven’t you! Bran will be very happy to see you!”
Shireen doubts that. First of all, he’s a boy, which means his stomach probably turns every time he sees a girl. Secondly, they hardly know each other. She only knows the Stark children because of her uncle Robert – he’s really good friends with Ned, their father, and Shireen has spent some Christmas eves or new year’s eves with them at uncle Robert’s house. But as she often spends the holidays with her mother, she can’t say she’s really friends with any of them. The only reason they’re at this stupid party is again because of her uncle. He called her father and practically demanded that they came. Shireen had timidly asked her father if perhaps they could say no, but he had simply clenched his jaw and said that his brother had really insisted.
She tries to stay close to her dad as long as she can, the only truly familiar face in a sea of half-strangers, but almost immediately they get separated by Catelyn, who doesn’t seem so beautiful to Shireen anymore. The last she sees of her father is as he’s being ushered in the living-room and his older brother gives him a hearty clap on the back. She gets sent upstairs, where the rest of the kids are.
The party is a bit of a torture. There are too many boys and too few girls, and she doesn’t know any of them. It would have been alright if Myrcella was there, but she is sick with the flu and uncle Robert brought only little Tommen with him, who’s playing with Rickon in a corner of Bran’s room. It’s a little embarrassing, but she ends up spending most of the time on her own, reading Bran’s comic books. The fact that no one seems to care to include her in any of the games they’re playing is even more embarrassing, but she tries to ignore the thought. She hates imposing herself on others. At least Bran has a really good taste in books.
She sees her father again when they go downstairs to cut the birthday cake. He’s standing on the side with Sansa, the oldest Stark girl, and they seem to be in deep conversation. They only pause when everyone starts singing the birthday song for Bran, Sansa singing loudly and clearly, a big smile on her fuchsia lips, her father remaining awkwardly silent. Shireen steals a moment as everyone gathers around the table to get a piece of the cake. Her father is typically abstaining from sugar. She asks him if they can go soon, now that the most important bit is done – and it comes as a shock to her when her father presses his lips together and tells her that it wouldn’t be right to leave so soon. She gives him a wounded look and doesn’t wait to see if it had any effect on him. She runs to the bathroom, and wastes as much time as she can away from everyone and their stupid happiness.
It seems like ages have passed before kids start leaving. To her surprise and displeasure, she is one of the last to leave, and even then she sort of has to nag her father about it. They’re standing in the hallway again, putting on their jackets. Catelyn and Sansa are there too, to see them off, and between small talk Sansa mentions how she had to take the bus to come to Winterfell because her car broke down a few days ago and she’ll have to borrow her mother’s car to return to King’s Landing.
Shireen happens to be looking at her father’s face when she says that, having turned to him to ask a question. There’s something in his eyes and mouth, a feeling that she won’t be able to decipher until she’s much older, and perhaps in this moment he doesn’t quite understand either.
“You can come with us, if you want. We’ll drop you off wherever you want” he offers, and Sansa’s smile is answer enough.
There’s always a companionable silence when she’s in the car with her father. She reads a book or she looks outside the window, and he’s focused on the road. On short rides there’s absolute silence. On longer rides, he sometimes plays audiobooks about history. Shireen listens along with him, zoning in and out of the subject, lulled by the calm voice of the reader. She’s heard of people playing games when they’re in the car, or singing to music. It’s a foreign concept to her, which is why it feels so strange to be in her father’s car now, trying to read on her e-book and constantly getting distracted by the ongoing conversation between her father and Sansa. It’s rather one-sided, with Sansa giving out most information, and her father asking questions as if he’s interrogating her. Shireen can’t help but listen to what they’re saying, and eventually gives up on the attempt to read, turns off the e-book and resorts to looking the wet darkness outside her window.
Sansa is in her last year of her elementary education degree, studying to be a teacher, and sounds genuinely excited about it – she goes on and on about the importance of solid, good education during people’s formative years, and how a teacher should be a role model and someone who can set you in the right path for the rest of your life. She talks a lot, but her voice is soft and fresh and Shireen finds it easy to listen to her as she jumps from subject to subject, talking about her studies, her siblings, the weather, how much it will cost to fix her car and whether she will stay in King’s Landing after she graduates. Shireen can see her father from where she’s sitting, stealing furtive glances at the young woman next to him, fading in and out of light as they pass by the tall lamp posts on the side of the road.
But Sansa doesn’t only talk. She listens too. It is an hour-long ride from Winterfell to King’s Landing, and somehow in the second half Sansa has managed to make Shireen’s father talk more than his daughter has ever heard him. It’s superficial stuff – what his job is like and what his studies were like when he was in college, but to Shireen it’s an entirely new experience to listen to her father talk about his life in such a linear and comprehensive way, and she keeps silent, listening intently, hoping he’ll say more about the things she is too timid to ask him.
When they arrive at Sansa’s place, instead of Sansa saying a quick thank you and goodbye before leaving, there is a strange, tentative silence. Shireen is looking between her father and Sansa a little impatiently, getting cranky again now that she’s not being distracted anymore and she remembers what a lousy time she had at the party. But the adults don’t seem to remember that she even exists. Eventually, Sansa asks if they want to go upstairs for a cup of hot chocolate. Apparently her roommate Margaery is visiting her family in the Reach for the holidays. Shireen swears that her father almost says yes, before he holds back and declines politely, saying that it’s getting late and they should be going home. They look at each other for a few long moments, and Shireen doesn’t get the point, because as far as she knows, neither of them is telepathic. At last, Sansa mumbles some thank yous and goodbyes to her father, and waves cheerfully at Shireen when she’s out of the car. Shireen waves back, thinking absentmindedly that she’s not going to see Sansa again until next Christmas.
She is to spend the rest of the holidays with her mother and this year is special because they’re going skiing in the Vale for a few days, with some of her mother’s family. On Saturday morning, on the last day before the trip and after she has turned her room upside down looking for her isothermal clothes, Shireen realizes she has left them in her wardrobe in her father’s place. When she tells her mother she rolls her eyes and scolds Shireen for being so careless and forgetful. She has her call her father -Selyse never talks with him if she can avoid it- and ask him if he’s home so that she can pick up her stuff from there. Her father sounds a little confused at first, which on its own is strange, but Shireen is too preoccupied with the fact that she has annoyed her mother over something that could have easily been avoided to pay any attention to her dad. She asks if she can come over right now, and his hesitation is long enough for her to register it, but the thought gets buried under his agreement.
On the way to his apartment her mother keeps complaining that this is completely disorganizing her day. Shireen remains purposefully silent, looking straight out of the window, trying not to look like she’s completely ignoring her mother. She gets in the tall apartment block on her own, her mum waiting in the car outside. In the elevator she’s trying to remember exactly how many pairs of isothermal pants she has and if there’s anything more she needs to pick up from her room, so that she won’t have to spend another awkward morning like this. She gets in the apartment in a hurry, knowing that her mother won’t like it if she keeps her waiting for too long. She shouts good morning as she crosses the living room to reach her own room, thinking that her dad will be in his study. She is startled when his voice comes from a lot closer – from the dining area.
She turns to look at him, a little dazed. He’s sitting at the dining table in his casual clothes, his usual cup of hot water in his hand. And next to him, with a lot less makeup than what Shireen remembers from Bran’s party, and wearing a shirt that she’s pretty sure she’s seen her dad wearing a hundred times, is Sansa. Her father is expressionless. Sansa smiles faintly. Shireen is just standing there, in the middle of the living-room, having for the moment forgotten what her purpose was.
“Oh” she says eventually. “Hi”
Her brain skips over most steps of logical thinking and arbitrarily decides that Sansa is there on a social call, completely shutting off the fact that she’s not wearing her own clothes, or that no one ever visits Stannis other than Davos, or that it’s entirely too early in the morning for anyone to pay a visit. Shireen mechanically tells them she needs to get her clothes and goes to her room. When she reemerges with a bag full of isothermal pants and shirts, she finds her father and Sansa just as she left them. She mumbles that she needs to leave, and her father finally gets up and walks her to the door of the apartment. He seems like he’s trying to tell her something, but Shireen is completely short-circuited and can’t help him the way she usually does when he’s struggling for words. Eventually he just wishes her to have a good time on the trip, pressing her head on his chest, the most physical expression of his affection towards her.
Her mother asks her if she got her stuff when she gets in the car, and this is when Shireen snaps back in reality, biting back the urge to make a sarcastic comment like, no, she just magically acquired this new bag she’s carrying, and it’s full of avocados or something, definitely not clothes. She doesn’t tell her mother about Sansa, partly because she never tells people things unless they specifically ask her, and partly because she doesn’t really know what to say about it.
//
“Do you mind if Sansa comes over?”
It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, and Shireen is sprawled on the living room carpet, dividing puzzle pieces according to their colour. Doing puzzles is one of her favorite activities with her dad – another thing that requires little talking and a fair bit of concentration. She suspects that it can’t be as fun for him as it is for her since he’s colourblind, but he’s got a good eye for shapes and is a great help with the tough parts, where colours don’t help and all you can do is blindly try to match pieces together. She looks up, surprise in her eyes. She had somehow managed to completely forget about Sansa in the month after the holidays, and her father had never mentioned anything.
“Sansa is coming here?” she asks slowly.
“If you think it’s ok” her father says, attempting to match two pieces together that should look entirely incompatible even to him.
Shireen looks down at her pieces as well, unable to look at her father. She wants to tell him it’s not really ok. She wants to tell him that she only gets to spend the weekends with him, and it’s not nearly enough, what with him working half the time and her studying for school. She wants to tell him she doesn’t want anyone to come over, because then she won’t have him for herself – his silence and his stillness are supposed to be only hers for these measly two days. But the words get stuck in her throat, creating a knot, and she only manages to nod that, yes, it’s alright if Sansa comes over.
When Sansa arrives with a bright smile and hair frizzy from the rain, Shireen doesn’t bother to get up from her spot on the floor, directing her greeting more to the lint on the carpet rather than to Sansa. Even from this position though she can see Sansa giving a quick, chaste kiss on her father’s cheek.
“Hey, Shireen!” Sansa says brightly. “You’re doing a puzzle, huh? I was never very good at them, always got bored within the first few minutes”
Shireen mumbles defensively that she doesn’t find puzzles boring at all. Sansa for some reason decides to sit next to her on the floor, even though she just stated she doesn’t like puzzles.
“Wow, that’s a lot of pieces. Are you doing this all by yourself?”
“Dad’s helping me out a bit. He’s quite good for a colourblind person” Shireen says as she fits another piece in its place.
“All men are a little colourblind, aren’t they?” Sansa says with a knowing laugh.
“No, dad actually is” Shireen says seriously, still looking at her pieces instead of Sansa.
“What? You never told me that” Sansa says awkwardly to Stannis who is looming over them.
“Well, it’s not that interesting” he says simply.
“Don’t start pointing at colours, asking him if he can recognize them” Shireen cuts in when she sees Sansa opening her mouth again. She smiles to herself when she sees Sansa shutting her mouth immediately and her cheeks flushing red.
“Erm, some tea?” her dad asks awkwardly.