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They’re sharing an afternoon, a relatively ordinary occurrence since Margaery Tyrell has taken Sansa under her wing. She had secured Sansa’s hand for a Tyrell marriage with a smile and sweet promises of sisterhood, and so far Margaery has been taking every opportunity to fulfill her sororal promises.
Today they’re working in concert, bent over a piece of decorative needlework intended for Sansa’s dowry. Margaery says it’s a southron tradition for a bride to work on the contents of her dowry with the women soon to be her sisters by marriage, so Sansa spends hours each day embroidering with Margaery’s cousins, who never, ever run out of secrets to share. By the time Sansa reaches the South, she thinks she’s likely to know every minor lord and lady in the Highgarden court by name, house, and most scandalous deed ever committed to public memory.
But this afternoon, in a rare instance of freedom from her court obligations, Margaery has swept down and stolen Sansa away for herself, linking arms in the conspiratorial, close way that she does. She takes the needlework too, to give them something to do.
It’s a lovely day, balmy and bright, and they’ve spread themselves out in a secluded corner of the castle gardens. Margaery is teaching Sansa an intricate southern stitch called the swan’s wing, chattering away all the while about how terrible she’d been at needlework as a child. Sansa, voicing a laughing objection, drops her head to focus on her overlapping stitches. Completing a flower petal worked in lavender, she reaches for the sewing shears and severs the line of dyed silk thread. Just like that, the thin bone embroidery needle she’s been using slips between her fingers and disappears into the grass.
“Oh!” she says, in alarm. Margaery looks up inquisitively. “I’ve lost my needle.”
“Well, that won’t do,” Margaery says cheerfully, gathering up the stiff fabric and setting it aside. “I’m told that lost needles are one of the most dangerous hazards in King’s Landing. Let’s search, shall we?” She moves in Sansa’s direction, and begins crawl gingerly about on all fours. Sansa joins her, squinting carefully at the soft green ground.
“Ouch!” Margaery exclaims, snatching something up with quick fingers and sitting back on her heels. She proffers her free hand with a mock wounded look, eyes big. “Why, it practically jumped out and bit me,” she says.
“Oh, no,” Sansa says, laughing at Margaery’s theatrics. She comes nearer and takes Margaery’s “wounded” hand, looking closely. Sansa presses a quick kiss to the tiny pinprick in her palm, as one might do for a child. “There. You’re healed.” She lets go and sits back on her own heels, and looks up.
Margaery is smiling at her with such singular fondness that Sansa stops short, astonished. She sucks in her breath, sharply aware of her heart speeding noisily in her chest as Margaery tilts her head just slightly, blue eyes wide. The possibility grows between them with every passing second, and although the thought is entirely new to Sansa, she thinks, with sudden dreaminess, She’s always been so kind. Then she moves without any more thinking. It seems to take very little effort to lean in the few inches and close the distance between them.
Margaery’s mouth is so soft and sweet, and it’s so easy, that Sansa nearly forgets herself. Her entire body feels like a starry hot shiver. Margaery is gentle, so gentle; she brings one hand to the side of Sansa’s face, holding her close. This isn’t very sisterly, Sansa thinks in a glorious daze, her mind jumbling up the words Margaery had said to her so long ago, when they had first become intimate friends.
She’s never kissed anyone, really—Joffrey, the Hound, in burned half-memories which she sometimes manages to forget—and she worries for a moment that she isn’t doing it right. But then Margaery makes a little noise that sounds like a contented smile; she sinks in just a little deeper, and it feels better than anything Sansa’s ever done. Cautiously, she smoothes her hand over Margaery’s sun-warmed hair where it falls over her shoulders. And, although she isn’t afraid, Sansa is trembling.
She is just working up the courage to advance, to move her hands to—well, she doesn’t even know where, wherever is the place that comes next—when Margaery lightly puts her hand on Sansa’s knee, and pulls away. She draws back and smiles at Sansa, her blue eyes warm and firm. It clearly means that they are done. Margaery brushes back a strand of Sansa’s hair with soft fingers, before rising in a poised swirl of silk and samite. She leaves Sansa alone behind her in the gardens, the disappointment welling up in her like a spring.
After, Sansa broods to herself. I shouldn’t have done that, she thinks tensely; what if—? Yet she can’t put a name to what it is that she fears. The danger she feels is ominous, ambiguous, and pressing, like a thick heavy fog. Sansa aches to realize that this feeling, which has clung to her for so long, is lessened when she is with Margaery. And it had completely disappeared when they’d kissed.
She knows better than anything that it’s dangerous to want, and even more dangerous to presume to love. She’s formed no bonds here in King’s Landing, and forces herself to remember why. How dazzling she’d found the ones who’d come before Margaery: Cersei and her gilded smiles and worse, Joffrey, a hollow perversion of the storybook prince he’d first seemed. Sansa knows, she just knows, how foolish it is to think that this would be anything but more of the same. But Margaery is different. Sansa almost resents the lessons she’s drilled into herself, but their constant tattoo of warning is overwhelmed by another feeling, something unexpected and wholly inviting.
Why did she pull away? Sansa can’t stop thinking. She puts a hand to her lips, gently touching her own mouth with two tentative fingers as if to capture the shadow of Margaery’s kisses there. Didn’t she like it?
Sansa had certainly liked it. For days the only thing she can think of is how much she wants to do it again—to taste Margaery’s rosehip mouth once more, to feel those hands touching her in a way that was more than chaste and sisterly.
Yet the next time she sees Margaery, the older girl is just as kind and preemptive as when she’d left Sansa before. “Walk with me,” she says gaily, and Sansa feels a little thrill just to hear her say it.
Margaery links arms and steers Sansa briskly down the stony promenade, the salty ocean breeze licking all around them. She’s just had a letter from Highgarden, brimming with details about the preparations for Sansa’s upcoming nuptials. The castle steward is cultivating a beautiful arbor there in Sansa’s honor, and has even managed to grow a flower very similar to the blue winter roses that, Margaery hears, were once the prize of Winterfell.
Sansa listens with a blushing ear, paying close attention to hear what Margaery isn’t saying. But Margaery speaks in a bright, hummingbird-quick voice, and they flit down the walkway at a similarly rapid pace. Try as she might, Sansa can’t hear anything in the older girl’s tone that acknowledges that golden day in the gardens. She waits dizzily for the postscript to Margaery’s little speech, which surely must be coming— for how could Margaery not speak to what is no doubt on both of their minds?
It doesn’t come. Sansa blinks in surprise to see that they have arrived at an archway leading into the Red Keep, the sandy castle walls jutting up in stark contrast against the blissfully cloud-studded sky. She turns her face to Margaery, vulnerable and questioning.
“Well, here I must leave you,” Margaery finishes blithely, “his Grace is waiting.” She leans in and gives Sansa a swift, cursory kiss on the cheek, before drawing back like a snake. “Do think of your wedding day,” she says warmly, “it will be here before you know it.”
Her cheek burning in that telltale spot, Sansa reaches to catch Margaery’s hand as the other girl turns away. “But… what about—” she begins, and then falters at the sweet, almost pitying look on Margaery’s face as the other girl twists back to look at her.
Sansa has to forcibly catch her breath when she understands, letting out a tiny shock of air as if she’d been dealt a blow. She wishes she could look away, but even in that aspect she’s powerless. And she knows that she’ll want to remember Margaery’s face, even as pained and half-exposed as it looks right now.
Margaery opens her mouth as if to speak, but hesitates, and doesn’t. She gives Sansa’s hand a short, sympathetic press between her own, before turning and leaving Sansa once more—thus firmly closing a door that Margaery had clearly never expected to open.
Much later, Sansa remembers her innocent desire on that sunny day and thinks, with all the insight of reflection: I should have known. Yes, she should have known, one way or another, about Margaery Tyrell.
She should have known that Margaery would always leave her wanting more.