porcelainandsteel

Fitz has taken to sitting under the trees daily, on his own, glowering into the middle distance, feeding a tiny, desperate speck of hope that he'll feel something, a flicker of life, a stray Skill thread, anything but this deafness that plagues him. So intent is he on trying to open up a mind filled with worries that he barely notices that Sansa is there until she speaks.

He disguises his surprise well, though he makes no effort to hide the hostile edge to his tone at being disturbed. "I suppose. They certainly spare no expense keeping this place looking well." It's a very lovely cage, adds the wolf in him.

In truth, the gorgeous snaps of colour only make him miss the true wild forest and windswept cliffs of home all the more. Here, it just serves as a reminder of how the Capitol serves them perfect artificial copies of reality. It reminds him that he isn't free. There should be life, birds hunting, mice rummaging, small growing things crawling through the trees. He should be in the middle of this web of little lives, not sitting here, dead to both Skill and Wit, in an exquisitely crafted prison, being spoken to by a girl who, he has privately decided in class, is nice enough, but too innocent to be anything but a pawn of the people drugging them, feeding them lies and stealing their lives.

"Did you want something?"

Edited 2016-04-27 13:52 (UTC)

She flinches a little at the hostility in his voice, but rallies quickly. After all, there's plenty worse than harsh words, and it's no excuse for forgetting her courtesy.

"I only thought you might like to talk, ser." She gives him a smile, as warm as she can muster, and tucks a stray lock of auburn hair behind her ear. I can leave if you like, she almost says, but bites it back. No point inviting him to send her away. "You seemed distant. Homesick. I know how that is."

It's a risk. A lot of men get defensive when you probe at their feelings, their weaknesses. But she's come to find that - delivered with enough wide-eyed guilelessness - it's a risk that often pays off. Men, like girls, do need to talk sometimes, after all. Besides, she isn't lying. She really does know how it feels to be far from home, and she really does want to make him feel better about it. She likes the Capitol, and even she feels a little alienated by how clean and artificial it is. It must be awful, if you don't even have reason to be grateful for it.

Seeing her flinch, Fitz softens a little. She's only a child, he scolds himself. So many of them are just children. And even though she's no younger than he was when he was killing for his king, and even though the Capitol is far from above using children in their games, he shouldn't be cruel to her.

"Homesick? Yes, I suppose. It's a long way from what I know." Mirroring her action, he pushes his white-streaked hair back. Unlike hers, it's obvious his hair hasn't seen a comb in days, and equally obvious that the tail it's bound back in has been slept in. He scratches his chin (overdue for a shave, he thinks), and looks up at the sky. "They treat us like the most favoured nobles here. It's only that I have work left undone at home."

"Oh." Sansa frowns, biting her lip and looking down at her folded hands. It seems to her dimly unfair that they should have taken someone who wanted to be wherever he was from, when there must be so many people like her, longing to be anywhere but their own worlds. "I'm sorry. That must be very difficult. Perhaps if you win, our hosts will let you go back?" She nods, trying to believe it for his sake. Whatever work it is he's left incomplete, it clearly matters to him. "I'm sure they wouldn't keep you from what you had to do. It must be very important, for it to occupy you so."

"Very important? No. Only the survival of those I hold most dear, and the land that raised me. Nothing for our valiant masters to worry their heads about." The bitterness in his voice surprises him, and he tamps his rising anger down carefully. Keep your past to yourself, he reminds himself. Not that there's much point worrying about it, seeing how clear the Capitol has made it that they know more than a little about his life as the Bastard. "I'm sorry. It's only that I don't belong here. This kind of puffery has never suited me."

She's quiet for a moment, biting her lip. Truth be told, she's questioning whether she should even continue this conversation. He seems more Arya's sort of person than hers, and the bitterness in his voice could so quickly become dangerous to him and the people around him, in a place like this.

In the end, ironically, that's what decides her. He knows it's dangerous - that's clear from how he tries to correct himself. He doesn't have the finesse he might need, though, and maybe she can help him there. Maybe she can help him, as well as gaining an ally.

Timidly, she reaches out for him, then thinks better of it and lets her hand drop back into her lap. "You needn't be sorry," she says gently. "Coming here is a shock, and it must be a very nasty shock, when what you were doing back home mattered so much. I don't think anybody could blame you for being hurt by it." A commiseration, but also a warning: you can only play that card for so long. "Their customs are different from mine, ser, and I don't doubt different from yours. I feel lost here, too. But we cannot spend all our time worrying over what suits us, not when this is what we have, and when they have been so generous to give it to us."

"You're right, of course." Fitz forces a smile, scratching at his scarred cheek. He doesn't look her in the eye, though, and he turns his wrist slightly, feeling for and missing the sensation of the little herb packets that should be hidden in his cuff. "I responded badly on my arrival. Lashed out in a panic. But that was my own foolishness, and I am learning to settle in. Pitifully slowly, I fear. I'm grateful for the Capitol's patience."

He fingers the raised bruise standing out from his scalp. Patience. Right.

Sansa nods, looking back up at the trees for a moment. If she squints, so that she only sees the red leaves, she can imagine she's back in the weirwood at Winterfell, on a sunny day. It isn't much, but it's something, and it makes it easier for her to collect herself.

It's a while before she looks back at him, venturing a smile. "If you think a friend would help you settle, you need only seek me out, ser."

"I-" Fitz began, then paused, gathering his thoughts. Did he need a friend? He had several allies - Eowyn, Merlyn, Sandy - but most of the people he'd met shared his antipathy to the Capitol. He wasn't making many friends among the establishment, especially not after his (wholly justified) attack on Jason.

"...perhaps," he finished lamely, and sketched a half-bow, not rising but consciously remembering his manners. "Fitz. Of District Ten."

Sansa beams at him, radiating innocent relief, and gets to her feet to curtsey in response. "Sansa Stark," she answers, smoothing her skirt as she straightens up. "District Six. And before that, Winterfell," she adds, after a moment's thought. Since coming here, she hasn't talked much about belonging back home - better to smile and accept that this has to be home now - but he seems like someone who might want to hear it. "I've only been here a week or two, myself."

"A little longer, for me," Fitz says, and looks up at her. He considers standing, to be polite, but decides he's a little too threatening, being both tall and battle-scarred. Better to give her the height advantage. "Stark? You're not of Arya Stark's family?"

"I am." Her voice is cheery enough, and she's smiling, but there's something a little brittle and bitter behind her eyes. She missed her sister, yes, and she's glad Arya is alive and here and not dead in a gutter somewhere... but it's still not pleasant to be known only by your sister. Especially not a sister you've never got along with.

She's earned it, Sansa scolds herself. You've only been here a short time. You can't expect to make your own reputation that fast. But it still feels like a snub, coming from someone who's as new as she is. It feels scary, too, because she's figured out by now how much of her fate here depends on her popularity.

She swallows down that jealousy. Jealousy isn't ladylike, isn't appealing. She makes her smile wider, sitting back down and folding her hands demurely in her lap. "She's my sister." Then, her smile fading, she bites her lip and lowers her eyes. "My... my whole family now, I suppose." Except for Jon, but he's taken the Black, and anyway, he's only a bastard, not her full brother.

"Sorry," Fitz tells his hands, picking at the calluses on his palm. "I haven't any family myself. Not any more. But for my uncle, and..." He trails off. Best to leave the work he's left unfinished behind him until he can get back. He can't hear Verity's call in his head any more but he knows it's there, he knows he needs him. But Sansa has made it clear that he needs not to talk about what they're keeping him from.

He tugs at a flap of dead skin, and glances up to offer her a smile, changing the subject back. "Do you spar as well as her? She made it sound as though in your world, it's strange for a woman to fight."

Sourness flickers over her face for a moment, only a moment, before she gets hold of herself. She can't quite scrub the bitterness out of her voice, though. "It is. Very strange. But nobody ever could talk Arya out of doing what she wanted."

Not that anyone tried. Not really. Oh, Septa Mordane had called her out, and their mother had been somewhat disapproving, but the people whose opinions Arya cared about? Their father? Robb? Jon? So far as Sansa had ever been able to tell, they'd gone out of their way to encourage Arya to misbehave. Given her swords, given her tutors, given her attention. And Sansa had spent every trip away from home, every new meeting and every party, trying to cover over her embarrassment of a sister, trying to be the perfect daughter, because gods knew Arya was never going to try to be.

And now? Now it seemed like everyone in this place agreed with Arya. That brawling in the gutter might be the best way to survive. Sansa hated it, hated that she felt like she'd failed in some way for not being a violent tomboy. She shouldn't be bitter, and she certainly shouldn't let herself show it, but it stung.

"I don't fight," she said abruptly, realising she'd let the silence stretch out too long. "That is, I never used to. I suppose I have to learn, now."

Her irritation didn't go unnoticed. Fitz filed it away in his mind, though his expression didn't flicker. He glanced up at her, still evidently absorbed in his hands. "There are ways and ways of fighting. People here have been fighting their whole lives. I first drew sword when I was years younger than you. You probably should learn to defend yourself, but if you're to survive it'll be about more than your skill with a blade."

He had determined that well before now. It was clear that, while in the arena his fighting skills might be useful, he himself was vastly outclassed by several people here. Skills with subterfuge, poison, diplomacy and quiet killing, not to mention hunting, would be what would help him survive in the arena. And out of the arena he'd been painfully reminded time and again that his ability to play at politics had never been what it should be. He needed allies. He missed Chade and the Fool like a cold ache in his chest, missed their guidance and their steady hand. He'd railed against their control often enough, but without it he was lost. Sansa may be exactly the kind of delicate, useless pretty thing that Regal loved in his court, but she knew how to play the game, that much was clear. Perhaps they could help each other.

"I can teach you to defend yourself. If you need. There's no shame in a lady knowing how to keep herself and her household safe."

A childish part of her wanted to stamp her foot and say that she didn't want to learn to fight, not with a blade or anything else. That she didn't want to play the game, didn't want to have to learn everything all over again, that she didn't even have a household to keep safe any more.

But that was a thought for a little girl. She might have said it once, when she was a child and could afford to pick and choose, but that had been a long time ago. Grown women didn't get to turn their backs on what needed to be done - and she was a grown woman, flowered and wedded.

She smiled at him. Be grateful, Sansa. This is just the offer you need. "I'm afraid I may be a disappointing student. But thank you, ser. Thank you so much." She batted her eyelashes for good measure, keeping just this side of flirtatious.

Fitz seemed entirely unaffected by her flirtatious mien and sweet attitude. He left his palm alone and went on to picking dirt out from under his short, dirty nails.

"I'll most likely be a disappointing tutor," he countered with a shrug. "But I've the experience to share, at least. You should learn staff fighting. It will keep your enemy at bay long enough for you to flee, and then you'll know how to improvise a weapon in a pinch. I think you'll find it easy enough to handle, though there'll be some bruising to begin with."

He wiped dirt off his nail onto his tunic, and moved on to the next finger, glancing up at Sansa from under surprisingly long dark lashes, eyebrow raised. It occurred to him that he wasn't helping his case. He was trying to be helpful, to tell her the simple truth, but she seemed much more fragile than he was used to dealing with.

Awkward, he hastened to soften the blow. "I mean no disrespect. It's only that before coming here I had been out of society far too long. Only my...my dog and I, travelling. I'm not so well suited to this place as you seem." He touched the still-swollen bruises on his scalp from his last run in with the Peacekeepers. "Honestly, I had hoped you could advise me on the niceties of living in court again. Well. I suppose it's not court, not truly. But."

"But the same niceties serve," she finished for him, and nodded. The same dangers, as well, she added to herself, looking at his bruises. Without really thinking, her hand went up to her cheek, where Ser Meryn's mailed fist had left similar marks more than once. "Bruising I can survive, ser, even if I would not seek it out the way some might." Arya. "I shall have to cope with far worse, after all, in the Arena."

And that frightens her, but she does her best not to let it show. The Capitol, after all, may always be watching. She can't be a coward. Innocent, yes, but not a coward. That could be the end of her.

She puts the thought aside with an effort, and turns a smile on him again. "But I have spent some time in courts, and I think perhaps I can recall a little of it to you. Though I know that the manners of this place are different to those of King's Landing, and of course, all my manners are a lady's, not a lord's." She's prattling, and she knows she ought to stop, to pick her words more carefully, but she's so profoundly relieved that he wants the same thing she does from an alliance.

"I shall do my best to learn to curtsey," Fitz says with a slight, wry smile. "I'm not sure I'd be a very good lady. I know my manners well enough, at least for my people. I'm only a little...should we say rusty? I suppose just as a sword arm grows weak when you aren't fighting, one's manners get stiff without proper airing." He drags a hand over his hair, dislodging more stray locks from his messy warrior's tail. "For myself, I'll almost be glad for the arena. Survival has become much more familiar to me than it once was. Though the Capitol is very fine, I feel I acquit myself very poorly here. My teachers would not be impressed with me."

"Mine would be horrified," Sansa says consolingly, and smiles. "I think Septa Mordane might need smelling salts if she were to see both Eddard Stark's daughters with swords. I can't decide whether she'd be more horrified that Arya's so good at it, or that I'm so embarrassingly bad!" And there, for a moment, is a flash of the real Sansa - not the innocent mask she's learnt to put on, or the walls of steel and suspicion she's built up underneath, nor even the manners and modesty she's always drawn around herself, but the girl underneath. She giggles, covering her mouth with her hand as though she can't believe she just said that.

Of course, then she remembers that Septa Mordane is dead, and so is her father, and the laugh dies on her lips. Still, for a moment, it was nice.

She clears her throat, toying with a lock of her hair. "What I mean to say is that I'm afraid I can't make myself be even almost glad for the Arena. But it's the price that has to be paid, I suppose, for all their kindness."

Fitz laughs with her, and his heart melts a little at the realisation of how young she is. She has the skills to play the game here, but she's still only a child, desperately young and more unprepared for battle than he'd ever been. Awkward, he moves a hand towards her as if to give her a comforting pat, but thinks better of it, his hand hovering unsurely for a moment before returning to the ground.

"I'm not promising anything. I can't promise anything. But in the arena...if you're afraid, find me."

She isn't sure how to react to that. It feels like it's been a long, long time since someone said something like that - made an offer that seemed so genuinely unselfish. She smiles at him, her gratitude clear, but doesn't meet his eyes. Instead, she looks up at him from under lowered lashes, not sure how to express the queer mixture of comfort and suspicion that offer's awoken in her.

"Thank you," she says at last, softly. "Truly. It might not be a promise, but it's more than I would have asked."

Fitz looks away, slight colour rising in his cheeks. "Mph," he mumbles disparagingly. "I'd as soon not waste my teaching. If I can't at least keep you alive as long as possible, that's my poor work." He's overcome again by loathing for this place and its callous treatment of children, from Sandy dying over and over to the child he's been writing to in District 10, and now this girl so afraid she's grateful for even the most meagre suggestion of help. He wants to rail and rant against the unfairness of it all, to take up arms against the whole dammed place, to shake every complacent useless adult in the city and demand that they explain themselves, throwing children to the wolves as they do, but instead be just clenches his fists, jaw taut. "I don't see the sport in setting someone who's never held a blade against a trained fighter. I've been years behind the sword. Won't I be a better spectacle than you?" He manages, this time, to sound less bitter, though his jaw is working as if he's holding back the world.

Sansa has to think about that, worrying at her lip. "I think..." she says at last, and hesitates. "I think it's a matter of fairness. They can't make only the good fighters perform, otherwise the rest of us would be getting for free what you have to pay so dearly for."

That, she thinks, is probably the safer part of what she thinks. But a large part of her mind is going back to times she's been hunting, or seen the men bring back trophies. Sometimes, yes, they wanted to fight a boar or a bear or a wolf, something big and scary that they could boast about around the fire. But sometimes, they just wanted to watch blood flow, even if it was from a rabbit or a sparrow. It wasn't about the spectacle of the hunt, then. It was about the kill. It's the same reason the crowds always turned out in their hundreds for an execution. For the kill.

The kill has always made her sick, and this is no exception - especially when she thinks of executions, and the crowd that watched her scream and cry as her father died. She wets her lips, and makes herself smile.

"Besides," she says brightly, "it isn't so bad. I might not be a great warrior, but I can learn. And they bring the dead back, or so Arya said. So it isn't real, is it? It's only a game."

"They may demand payment in service," Fitz says slowly. "That's all well and good. But I'd as soon choose to fight alone to keep those who can't defend themselves safe. If that means losing the arena, as you say, it's only a game."

But it isn't only a game, because he of all people knows that pain can make death a welcome relief, that immortality is no defense. He's talked to people who've died and seen friends die in the arena. He doesn't say anything, doesn't want to frighten her, but there's an animal fear flickering in his eyes when he smiles, and he can feel the pressure of panic building.

She sees that panic. He's not very good at hiding it, and she's seen that look too many times to miss it - often, she's seen it in the mirror. This time, she doesn't hesitate, or even think about the politics of the situation: she just reaches out and puts her hand on his, squeezing it gently. It's all she can think to do, the only comfort she can offer.

"It's only for a time," she says quietly, and tries to meet his eyes. In her look, he might see that she knows, too, that it's not a game. Not really. "A few weeks, for months of peace and prosperity. It's worth it, I think, truly." Is it? She isn't sure - but she does know it's better than war. And better than killing children.

The fact that she's younger than most of the children they killed hasn't really occurred to her. She's a woman, after all, flowered and wedded, and none of the District children she's seen in the footage look grown-up at all.

Her touch startles Fitz, and his hard-worn hand tenses under hers. He doesn't match her gaze, looking past her to the cerulean sky behind her bright hair. "You shouldn't touch me like that," he says brusquely, changing the subject. "There's quite a gossip mill in this city. I sparred a while with a friend when I arrived, six hours hence for all you'd hear you'd think we'd been secretly bedding together for years." He flushes and drops his eyes. That's still deeply embarrassing for him.

A ghost of a smile passes over her face, and she draws her hand away again. "If that took you by surprise," she comments, with a weary wryness that's older than she has any right to sound, "I suppose you must have been a long time away from court."

True, in her world, nobody would have assumed that two men were bedding together - at least, not unless one of them angered the smallfolk enough to warrant that accusation - but the principle stands. She knows he's right. She also knows, although she won't say aloud, that in a place like this, being part of the gossip mill may not always be a bad thing. If there's one thing she's grasped quickly, it's how important it is to be known around here, even if it's for ridiculous things. That's a long way from King's Landing, where she spent most of her time trying to fade into the background, but if she's going to survive here, she needs to learn to stand out and win the public interest.

But not like this. Not if it makes him more uncomfortable instead of less.

"The gossip mill won't stop just because we don't touch," she warns him, though. "You're a man, and I am a woman. And you're talking to me, treating me kindly. You all but swore protection to me. There will be questions raised, and some folk always seek the answer that's most scandalous." That's franker than she ought to be, if she's going to maintain her innocent, naive facade, but it doesn't seem fair not to make that clear.

"You're a child," Fitz objects rather tactlessly. True, she's not so much younger than when he and Molly first got together, but she seems immensely younger than him. "Surely they won't think-" He stops. Of course they will. "I told them this before, and Eowyn said the same to me. I'm a married man, for all this place treats me as a boy, and I'll not betray my wife like that. But if I know that, that's what matters."

"I'm a married woman," she tells him, a little tartly. Again, it may not be wholly in line with her sweet-and-innocent persona, but the truth is, she's needled. She might not have chosen her marriage, any more than she chose to grow up, but both of them happened, and if she can't take them back, if she can't be a child again, then what right does he have to call her one?

Somewhat abashed, Fitz returns to picking at his nails. "My pardon. I only meant that...I told you, I've been long out of society. Forgive my rudeness."

She relaxes a little, and shakes her head. "It doesn't matter," she says. "It's only... Well, I didn't think I looked that young. I suppose in twenty years, I'll be wishing I did!" It's a rather feeble attempt at humour, to distract from the fact that now she feels rather bad about her sharpness.

Fitz obliges her with a laugh. "I'm not so very much older than you, in any case, but I've often been taken for an old man of late." He screws up his face, miming age. "Withered and broken, that's me."

Sansa laughs, too, sounding rather surprised. "I've seen worse," she tells him. "You look around my brother's age. Sixteen or seventeen. Am I close?"

"Seventeen or eighteen." He shrugs. "I can't be entirely sure, but it must be around that."

"You don't know?" she bursts out, in genuine surprise, and then puts her hand to her mouth, her eyes widening. "Oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have... it isn't my business, I know. Forget I said anything."

"I know," he protested. "More or less. To within a month."

"Oh." She frowned a little, considering this. "I see. That's, um..." She trailed off, unsure what to say, and settled rather lamely for "You must have had a very different kind of life back home from what I'm used to."

He shrugged, uncomfortable. "It's only that I don't know what the date is now. As I said. I've been out of civilisation a while. Nor do I know how time here sits alongside time at home."

She nodded understanding, toying with a loose lock of hair as she thought. "...That makes sense," she admitted, quietly. "I hadn't thought of it that way. I just kept counting the time as I would back home. Although a moon's turn isn't so clear here, with all the lights."

"The stars are different too, when I can see them," Fitz agreed. "Which is none too often. So even the season's turn may mean nothing. I spoke to a man who thought time here may not even touch time where we come from. Like in a dream, you can pass hours or days in a few seconds, or have a moment take a year to pass." He thought about how when he ran with the wolf days had blurred together into nothingness, and he suddenly felt a little sick. He didn't want to lose track of time. He tried to comfort himself with the thought Merlyn had given him, that the time he spent here was meaningless, but all he could think was time ebbed away and Verity grew weaker with nobody to help him.

He stood abruptly, restless. "It hardly matters. With the time we do have - I will be in the stables for a few hours after class. Perhaps after that we should meet and begin your training."

Sansa bit her lip, unnerved by that sudden movement and his clear change in mood, but she nodded. "In the gym? I can do that. Thank you, ser." She stood to see him away, dipping a little curtsey.

For Ayu

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whoops we did a tense change

apparently

I didn't forget about this, honest >.>

Of course you didn't. I believe you entirely.

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you want to set up another thread or?