❅ Seventeen (Text)

[stonebird]

Have you ever been in love?

(This is asked late one night and it might seem frivolous with the current concerns hovering over the populace of Hadriel. Yet Sansa believes love is important no matter how long someone lives - or where they are imprisoned. Besides, she had a taste of love recently and it's a frightening - and exhilarating - change of scenery for her.)

Can it last?

Comments

[private]

[northerndragon]

Am I the person you really want to ask that?

[private]

[stonebird]

I am curious about your opinion, but I want a general opinion too. (Jon, just be happy.) I felt...something like love...last month. I didn't expect it.

[northerndragon]

[He is trying, but he also remembers the strangeness of the days when he woke up without Daenerys’s name, and her without his. And now that it’s in the past, it’s made him loath to leave her side.]

Something like it, but you weren’t sure?
Whose name did they put on you?

[stonebird]

(Sansa blushes brightly at the inquiries, her cheeks hot and her head feeling strangely light.)

I...know what I felt. (It had been intense and wonderful.) A lady's. Maria. She is a lady knight and she is taller than I am with pale hair.

[circumitus]

assuming you mean romantic love and also not the kind where the god itself forces you to feel things that might not actually be your own?

because if its your own feelings then they can last.
maybe.
probably.
dont know.

but here it's hard to tell sometimes when there's an actual asshole named love around who can fuck with your emotions at any time.

[Hence why Rey has had such a complex about the whole idea of love ever since she learned about the god before they were even resurrected. She still wishes they hadn't been, and that they'd be in a less confusing place without their occasional influence.]

[northerndragon]

[Well, he knows another lady knight who is taller than her with pale hair, and he hasn’t ever seen any hint of that sort of thing between them.]

When you were with her, what did you love about her?

I think the face of someone you love becomes more beautiful every day.

[stonebird]

I was scared. (But Maria had been patient and kind, letting Sansa move at her own pace.) She is very beautiful and it surprised me. I never expected to feel that way for a woman. I never have before.

[stonebird]

I can't decide if Love gave me a gift or a curse. What I felt was wonderful and I remember it still.

(Poor Sansa is having her view of romantic love turned on its head.)

I knew it wasn't me naturally feeling those emotions, yet I value them still. Is that foolish?

[circumitus]

["Most definitely a curse," she wants to say, but SIGH. Trying to be a rational adult here and it's hard.]

this have something to do with the names on our skin last month?
that shit was fucked up.
didnt ask for any of that.
not your fault if youre still feeling it tho. unlike the gods for all of those negative emotions, the positive ones are sometimes the most insidious here - it's harder to let the good part go after it's done and over with.

[stonebird]

I'm not willing to let go of any good I come across.

(Even if it is complicated and shakes up her view of herself and the world.)

Were you affected? I'm sorry if you were.

cw Game of Thrones

[northerndragon]

[That aspect, he’s a little less comfortable with... a little less, but not a lot. There had been men in the Watch who had been nearly inseparable in a way that suggested they were more than brothers, and a few now and then who had once been whores. Better by far a whore than a killer or a raper. And there are men and women here now, too, who seem to prefer the company of their own kind.

It’s hard for him to look harshly on anyone who can find happiness without hurting any others, and he doesn’t think the Old Gods care much if women lay together, or men with men. The same goes for Sansa: he doesn’t care what she does with her body... he doesn’t really want to know, in all honesty... so long as no one is hurting her and there are no bastard children.]

Aye, well, I have before. A woman.

[And from the way he’s phrasing it, the tone in his voice: it didn’t last.]

Your parents. They were a made match, political, but they seemed....

[About as happy as anyone could expect a marriage pact between two great houses for armies and lands to be. There had only been one stain on it that he knew of: him.]

[circumitus]

guess thats fair.

[Far be Rey one to tell someone what they should or shouldn't feel, especially when it's not the bad stuff.]

yeah, was affected.
dont liked having my head toyed with.
never like that.

cw Game of Thrones

[stonebird]

(They are equal in one respect: Sansa would rather not know what he does with Daenerys either. Of course her experience of homosexuality has been far more illuminating since she left Westeros. Two Elves of that persuasion had given her a home and she had seen for herself the love between them. She doesn't see anything wrong with that sexuality - it harms no one and can bring much joy - however she has always envisioned herself married to a man and having children.)

That is expected of you! (She rubs one of her cheeks, feeling the heat under her fingers.) They were in love, it's true. I wanted a marriage like theirs one day and I have had dreams about my children.

[stonebird]

Good things are so rare. Letting any of them go seems a waste.

(Not that she knows what to do with this "good thing". But details.)

I don't either. It's frightening how deeply they can change us. You start to question your existence.

[circumitus]

seems that way sometimes.

[It would just be better knowing that they're always her own, and not someone else's. As someone who's lives different lives with the memories of different people, finding her own place has never been easy for Rey.]

just

been messed up way before.
swore never to let it happen again.
been harder to keep that promise in a place thats constantly trying to turn your feelings against yourself.

[northerndragon]

[The truth comes to him very clear now: he wants a better marriage than theirs, one where he isn’t lying to his wife, or her to him, and where none of the children of the house feel like they don’t have a place there. But he won’t say this to Sansa. Her parents are dead, and in spite of the lies, their marriage had still seemed happier than most.

As to what he does with Daenerys... well, he thinks the whole house knows, because they haven’t been quiet lately. Maybe one day, in another year or two, he’ll talk her into a house of their own, but for now, he likes living among family and friends in a big, warm stone building. It’s what he’s used to.]

I said before that I wouldn’t make you marry again. That’s still true, but I suppose it’s more in your hands now. It isn’t my place.

Have you ever — have you felt this way about a man?

cw Game of Thrones

[stonebird]

I think I know some of what you feel.

(She has been tortured, mentally and physically, raped and embarrassed to a point where she considered taking her own life. Messed up sums it up.)

You're not alone, Lady Rey. Please remember that.

[stonebird]

(Considering her experience with betrothal and marriage, the union between Eddard and Catelyn seems like a dream come true. Sansa understands that sometimes, even in love, dreams must be released in favor of reality.

Also, don't worry. If Sansa hears them, she busies herself in other parts of the house.)

I am not ready to marry. (At all. The idea frightens her immensely.) I thought I was in love with Joffrey and Loras. Then...

(There was the Hound. Her feelings for him are still confused.)

I really am foolish.

[circumitus]

havent forgotten.

[In a way, it's impossible to feel alone when you've shared mind and bodies with others, even if you don't all mingle in a way that feels any less lonely than an island. Rey's had her fair share of the good and bad, both from those other experiences as well as her own.

[After a moment, she sighs to herself, and stays on topic.]

anyway
to answer your original question, yeah.
have been in love before.
or maybe just something like love.
didnt have any right to love her, tho. dont know why it ended up that way but it just
did.
feelings were already bullshit even before the gods came along. [Uuuughghghhh.]

[northerndragon]

Don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who wasn’t foolish in love — at least a little.

[Remember that time when he and a woman he was clearly taken with disappeared on a little boat together for six weeks, and he came back sick, exhausted, clearly more in love than ever, and with no understanding between them, not even a kiss? He had rarely felt more like a fool than on the few mornings he’d awoken in the bunk with their arms wrapped around each other and the lengths of their bodies pressed together, something that had happened without his conscious will as they both slept.]

Is it the same with her as it was with them? Or is it something more, or something less?

[stonebird]

(She had meant that as a comfort, but she can see how it is rather sad too.)

You didn't have the right to love someone? I feel like you aren't giving yourself proper credit.

(Every man she has been with - save for perhaps Tyrion - didn't deserve to be loved by anyone except, maybe, women has cruel and callous as them.)

I thought I loved a boy king once, but he proved to be nothing but a monster.

[stonebird]

I am worse. (Jon, you're the sort of man Sansa needs. Too bad they're siblings and he is hopelessly in love with a Dragon Queen.)

Love gave me the emotions and so I understand they are not entirely my own. But I am very fond of her and I see no harm in spending time at her side.

Every time I have felt attraction, it has been killed prematurely. I've never been with anyone solely out of love - or for love at all.

text;

[claritatis]

[He browses the network often, but doesn't usually comment on anything unless it pertains more directly to him than this post, which catches his attention when he's struggling to sleep.

Normally, he'd say nothing, but this time...]

I have. I am.
I think that if you give to much focus to an ending to such things, you can miss out on the present.

text;

[stonebird]

(Live in the moment. Sansa has a hard time doing that, but she tries. When her mind isn't racing in horrific circles.)

Are they present in Hadriel too? You must worry about them if so. I hope the deities leave both of you alone, at least.

[circumitus]

[It's a natural talent. Leave it to Rey to take words of comfort and make it somehow tragic.]

wasnt about getting credit it's

we had history.
on opposing fields in wartime.
neither of us knew at first and by then she had already showed a kindness.
didn't deserve that kindness but she gave it anyway.

she

didn't take the news of who we used to be to each other very well.
and she had ever right to it.
someone she cared about had died.

[Maybe the version of Rey at that time hadn't dealt the killing blow, but it was her bullet that signed that soldier's death warrant, after days of her mission being impeded on by the two Canadian sniper women that got in her way. Even if Faye offered understanding in the end, was that ever going to be enough to mend whatever could be between them?]

boy king huh?
terrible.
the worst kinds of monsters are always the ones with the power to get away with it.