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Sansa was dying.
It was the truth, Arya realised, however cruel and ironic. Her sister had survived the war, but would die now when peace had come and happiness was within her reach.
Sansa had given birth to two healthy twins three days prior. A boy and a girl, with Jon's thick dark hair but Sansa's bright eyes. She had laid ill with puerperal fever ever since. Maester Sam had told Arya she would not live through the night. He had said the same the night before, but this time, Arya believed him.
Sansa laid in bed, her red hair splashed out around her, fire against the icy white of the pillows, her forehead glistening with fever sweat. It was getting worse. Sometimes she spoke, confused murmured questions and names and phrases. Sometimes she laid so still and was so quiet Arya feared it might already have ended. Once Sansa had asked for her children with heartbreaking clarity, and Arya had them brought in the room. The babes had began crying almost immidiately after Sansa had held them, as if they could smell the death in the room, and the wet nurse had to leave with them. Sansa was not to get upset.
Arya sat with her sister, Winterfell's grey walls a shield around them both against the darkness of the night. Sansa drifted in and out of awareness. She sat up, once, looked right at Arya and asked if she was going to die. Arya, unsure of what else to tell her, gav her the truth with a nod. Sansa wept then, big, irrational sobs that was unlike her. But then in a minute, the fever claimed her mind again.
She spoke of Mother, and of Father, of people Arya did not know. Of the wolf she had lost, crying Lady's name into the pillows. Sometimes she seemed to have nightmares of sorts, screaming in terror of things only she could see. Arya did her best to calm her sister.
Sansa said Arya's name, too, sometimes, as if she could not see her sitting there. "I'm sorry," Sansa would whisper, again, again, again, "I'm sorry, Father" or Mother or Arya or Lady or Robb. Once, she sat up in bed again and just said "No." She whispered of little birds and someone named Alayne and Jon, and Jon, Jon most of all, his name a prayer and a thank you on her lips.
Jon had wed Sansa ten months before in the godswood. To Arya he was still her hairmussing brother, but to Sansa he had turned husband. She wept and cried out and called for him now, but he was miles away. If Arya knew him right he was riding through the night as she sat there, coming from The Gift as fast as a man could, but as the night progressed, Arya began realising that he would not make it there on time. Sansa would not make it.
The hours drifted by, both slower and faster than Arya wanted. She could see it was beginning to end - the fever was higher than ever, and Sansa's speech was growing more incoherent by the minute. Arya felt so very empty. This sister she had envied and loved and annoyed and complained of ... They had reunited only to part again.
Arya began speaking aswell, doubting Sansa heard a word but unable to help herself. Arya made promises, about the babes and Jon and Winterfell and their people. She spoke of the people they had lost, reassuring Sansa she was just about to meet them again.
(Arya tried to say goodbye, but her tongue refused to say the word. Strange - one might have thought she would have gotten used to goodbyes.)
As awful as it was, Arya must have fallen asleep there, to Sansa's restless murmurs and the crackling of the fire, for she startled awake when Sansa suddenly cried out Jon's name once more. Arya's eyelids fluttering open, she could see Sansa sitting up in bed.
"Jon?" Sansa whispered, quiet now but with more clarity than anything else she had said that night. "Is Jon here?"
Arya's heart ached. "No, San. Jon's not here."
For the first time in hours, Sansa seemed to have heard her, for she nodded sadly.
"Pity", she whispered, leaning back against the pillows. "I wanted to... One last time..." She began losing it again, that clarity, and Arya thought that was the end of it. But Sansa closed her eyes with a final whisper.
"It would have been so sweet, to see him once again."
She took a deep breath. Another.
Then no more.
***
Morning broke, and with it came the cries of two new voices, crying as if in grief. Mother used to say "the louder the cries, the healthier the babe", and Arya hoped it to be true.
The babes had lost a mother during the night, but they where not orphaned.
Scouts spotted a lone rider not far from the gates an hour past dawn.
Arya did not go greet him herself, refusing to leave her sister's body. But she heard his steps in the corridor not long after - the hurried, hopeful steps of a man who did not know he was already far, far too late.
Jon was home.