Chapter Text
She hadn’t wanted to come to camp. It was Arya’s idea; she begged for months to be able to go, to spend their summer canoeing, hiking, swimming, and participating in a color war. Her parents would have said yes no matter what, but with their father’s unexpected heart attack mid-March, their mother decided maybe it was best if they both went. Catelyn Stark signed all of them up for some summer activity to “distract” them: Robb was taking summer courses, she and Arya were here, Bran went to some special camp for disabled kids, and Rickon, who was too little to go to camp, got signed up for tee-ball.
Camp was less of a distraction and more of a reminder to Sansa that she wouldn’t be there if her dad hadn’t died. Even around the cabin, that was her identifying characteristic. She was Sansa, the girl with the dead dad. The camp itself wasn’t as bad as she imagined it to be; there were art classes and dance classes, and a few of the girls reminded her of her friends at home. But there was no privacy, no place to gather your thoughts, which is why Sansa, who had never met a rule she didn’t follow to the letter, snuck out of her cabin every night at midnight to sit down on the dock and think.
The water wasn’t as cold as it had been the week before and so Sansa dangled her feet into the lake, watching the little ripples on the surface in the moonlight. When she closed her eyes, all she heard was the sound of wind moving through the trees, and it made her sigh in gratitude.
“What are you doing?”
Sansa screamed, whirling around and nearly falling into the lake when she saw it was only Brienne, her counselor. The other girls in the cabin didn’t like her, calling her any variety of terrible names. They mocked her size, her ugliness, her tendency to wear men’s cargo shorts instead of the cute khaki shorts the other female counselors wore. “Brienne the Beauty,” one of the girls christened the counselor in a bit of mean spirited sarcasm, and Sansa knew Brienne heard some of the names. She always turned a ferocious shade of pink when the more aggressive girls started to mess with her, and Sansa thought it looked as if she was always folding in on herself, trying to shrink herself into invisibility. It was impossible, of course, but Sansa understood the impulse. Even if she wasn’t the girl with the dead dad, she had been the tallest person in her class until the boys started hitting puberty in middle school, and she lost track of how often she’d been compared to a giraffe or flamingo.
“I needed to be somewhere quiet.”
“Are you meeting someone?”
“Meeting someone?” When Brienne nodded towards the boys’ camp across the lake, Sansa quickly shook her head. “No, I just – Doesn’t it feel claustrophobic in there sometimes?”
Brienne’s face twisted into an expression of pain for a moment before nodding. “It’s just – You’re not supposed to be out after curfew.”
“I know but…you’re here now, so isn’t it okay?”
Brienne paused before carefully lowering herself down onto the dock. She tugged off her shoes and put her feet in the water, and they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Sansa kept stealing looks at the older girl out of the corner of her eye before finally asking, “Do you like being a counselor here?”
“No.”
“Then why work here?”
“My dad owns it.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know why she said it, why it chose to come bubbling out now, but Sansa said, “My dad’s dead.”
Brienne looked at her, and for the first time Sansa noticed how blue her eyes were. “My mom’s dead.”
“Does it ever hurt less?”
“No,” Brienne said softly, and Sansa felt such an overwhelming wave of gratitude towards her in that moment. Everyone else gave her empty platitudes about how it would get better, how soon she’d be able to just remember the good times, but she knew there was nothing that could erase the sight of her father falling to his knees in the backyard, one hand clutching at his arm. Nothing would ever make the hurt go away, and none of her siblings seemed to understand that. They weren’t there; they didn’t see.
“I come out here every night,” Sansa told her when they put their shoes back on to head back to the cabin. “Maybe you could come too.”
The guardedness in Brienne’s eyes made Sansa want to hug her. “We’re really not supposed to be out here.”
“What’s your dad going to do, fire you?”
One side of her mouth quirked upward. “I guess not.”
They were almost back to the cabin when Sansa said, “You know, you aren’t that much taller than me.”
Brienne smiled this time. “I’m a half-foot taller than you.”
“Still less than the rest of the girls.” She climbed two of the steps up to the cabin so she was eye level with Brienne. It was wild impulse that made her lean forward and brush a kiss against Brienne’s cheek, which instantly turned pink. “Thank you.”
Brienne nodded before ducking her head, hiding her face, and Sansa wondered what it would be like to kiss her mouth.
Maybe she’d find out tomorrow night.