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❅ Eleven (Text)
I have a delicate matter I need to discuss with a lady; preferably one who comes from a modern era. (Since her era has been called "medieval" more than once. Surely humanity has progressed in this...?)
I thank you in advance for your time. I would also like to -
(This is more difficult.)
A great Elf has left us. He was very dear to me and I will miss him for the rest of my life.
I thank you in advance for your time. I would also like to -
(This is more difficult.)
A great Elf has left us. He was very dear to me and I will miss him for the rest of my life.
no subject
One of your friends, I know, but how did this one save you in particular?
I owe them my thanks for looking after you so well.
no subject
(Hiding it any longer is pointless.)
I was left alone in Ruby City. Father left and Bran followed him. I did not know, then, that you survived or that Winterfell could ever be reclaimed. I lived alone in the city until Lords Maedhros and Fingon took pity on me. They gave me a home, yet that wasn't all they gave me. I had nightmares - many of them - and each time they came to my aid. I felt...safe...for the first time since I initially left Winterfell.
(The value of that cannot be expressed in words.)
As the months passed, I grew closer and closer to them. I began to love them and care for them. They were quite serious when they claimed they had adopted me and I did not mind. Lord Maedhros taught me how to defend myself, Lord Fingon helped me cook and Lord Maglor gave me music lessons.
cw GoT themes -- violence, murder, abuse, etc.
Every time she mentions seeing Father, seeing Bran, he wonders what he would give to receive the same gift. The truly dead are unmeetable except in dreams, and even then, most of his dreams of the dead have been of them feasting in a hall he cannot enter, hearing Father's voice and Robb's mixed in with the din. Even as a dead man himself, he hadn't met them.
If he ever does get the chance to talk to Father again, he hopes that Ned Stark will be proud of what his bastard son has done and become.
But Sansa has had the chance to meet him and speak with him, and then he'd gone again, and now... this must be like losing him all over again. For so long, no one had protected his sister at all: they had done nothing but use her to their own ends, for power in the North. She is a symbol, he understands that they both are now, but she was also a young girl. Almost everyone but her lady knight forgot that.]
You told me once that no one can protect anyone. I'm glad they proved that wrong. But I'm sorry you've lost such a friend.
I never had a second father, but there were men who were kind to me. Lord Commander Mormont, when I joined the Watch. He was slaughtered by mutineers. [Like me.] And I wasn't anywhere near him, I couldn't protect him, but I did what I could to avenge him.
[She knows he was Mormont's steward; he's not sure she's aware of the great number of men he killed in clearing out Craster's Keep. Telling her of a man who forced his own daughters into marriage hadn't been something he'd wanted to do when she'd come seeking refuge from Ramsay.]
it's just a normal day in Westeros... (also warning for suicide)
If she allows herself to think about Father and Bran...
The tears really will never stop.)
The Elves are remarkable. I met many of them in Ruby City and they proved me wrong. I am sure if they followed us home, they would find a way to protect us.
(She winces and nods slowly, understanding the horror and pain Jon must have felt to find Mormont slain.)
At least you could do that much. I thought about pushing Joffrey to his death after Father was beheaded. I even contemplated jumping to my death, but I was stopped both times.
(She is glad of it, too.)
Maedhros wasn't some magical cure-all; he was honest and I saw him overcome his own past. Not once did he treat me as any less for my weaknesses. That encouraged me to overcome them; to be better so that I could return what he had given me.
no subject
[And in all honesty, a few generations-old lords with battle experience and the skill to forge the sort of weapons they do might be of great help in the eventual war against the Dead.]
I'm glad you didn't jump or push Joffrey. I'm glad another Stark didn't die because of him.
Who stopped you?
[To have stopped her, they would have had to see what she was contemplating. And if Joffrey was involved, that meant they were someone close to the king who hadn't told the king what she had considered. And that means that she might have had friends he's not aware of.]
Not Littlefinger.
no subject
(Exactly. Sansa would be fine employing an army of Elves. They would finish the war quickly and their loyalty would be unwavering!)
I'm glad I didn't do either of those things, too. I was miserable at the time and angry. I felt responsible for Father's death.
(Her smile is filled with irony. The one who held her back - who always seemed to be around to talk sense into her - was the last person she would have ever expected to be...kind. In his own way.)
Sandor Clegane.
no subject
[The man is rough, and a killer, and loyal to the Lannisters.
Why had he saved Sansa? Saved her more than once? He knows that tone in her voice; it sounds like she's smiling.]
Did he ever ask anything of you in return?
no subject
(She doesn't understand it either.)
He saved me from being raped, too, when the city rose against Joffrey. I will not say he was nice, but he never hurt me.
(He is a curiosity to her.)
He did ask me to leave with him during the Battle of the Blackwater. He said he would take me back to Winterfell. But he frightened me and he was drunk. Besides, I had already made plans with Ser Dontos, who worked in secret for Baelish.
I probably should have gone with the Hound.
no subject
[Now he just sounds tired. He isn't sure who she should have gone with, but he knows that she couldn't have stayed. Maybe there was no safe route anywhere. Even if she had made it all the way to the Wall, then, he wouldn't have been able to do much to protect her, though he imagines that Aemon might have tried to find a way.
Mostly, he wishes that Brienne of Tarth had been able to find her sooner.]
no subject
(She feels a curl of anger over that night.)
I thought Ser Dontos was a well-meaning fool. I was desperate and it did not occur to me that it was a trap.
no subject
[He sounds more frustrated than angry. It's not the worst thing that happened to her after Father died. But he still feels guilty about his inability to protect his family in any way during their darkest hour. It may be for the best that he'd felt that he didn't have anywhere to go other than the Wall, but he'd tied himself almost inexorably to the Watch just as the snare had started to close around people he loved.
He doesn't know if Sansa, Sansa as she was then, would have wanted his help. But he would have given it anyway.
He finishes his thought with a click of his tongue and a resigned sigh.]
Never thought I'd be thanking the gods for Clegane.
[But he wonders, briefly, if there's any good reason why he shouldn't kill Baelish. It crosses his mind now and then: the man is poison. Any fool should be able to see as much.
The good reason is that it would be a problem if the King in the North killed the Lord Protector of the Vale... on the other hand, the King in the North is not sure that Lord Royce, the second highest lord in the Vale and a man of unimpeachable worthiness, would think very ill of it. Lord Arryn might.]
no subject
It was a surprise to me too. (He is a great example of appearances being deceiving. As for Baelish...
He is already pushing Sansa's buttons. If he remains useful in some capacity, he can live. But as soon as he outlives his welcome, she won't mourn his death. She hasn't forgotten how he sold her to Bolton.)