(no subject)

[lastchanceforhonor]

It was, she supposed, very simple. She had cleaned her rooms the best that she could, although given her own state of affairs the best she could was not entirely satisfactory. Still, it was simple. It was time for her to get rid of the things she had been holding onto - those dresses that were too short, the bright jewelry that was featherlight and painted with colors that she had never seen, the frilly, girly things that had no business in her wardrobe.

Sansa Stark knew full well that there was no escaping who she was. There was no escaping her duty, her name, her birthright. She was not free, here - not unless she made herself free. She wondered still if she should have killed him outright, if she would have been able to before she would have been imprisoned, and if that would have changed things. She knew who she was, knew- Oh, her father would not have been disappointed in what she had done, but this - the things, the things that were not fitting or proper, those were...

She still wished for them. Perhaps she was torn from the disconnect, from what she wanted, and what she thought she should do; perhaps it was something more than that, that she knew that by taking her own fate by the hands, as Sansa Stark, The Wolf of Winterfell or something else similar, that if she would follow in her family's footsteps and never let a Lannister or any other family rule her life, it meant that she could not have such things, could not think on such flights of fancy.

She stopped, staring at the pile on her floor, before she shook her head. No. There was no room for them. Not anymore.

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[wholeworldoutthere]

"And you're spring cleaning," Klaus noted, with a nudge of his boot to the pile of clothes on the floor. It was difficult not to notice that they were not, in fact, bloody, unlike the room itself.

He took a few steps to the side, looked over at her. "I will have a chat with him. Trust me in this, Sansa, this will not happen again."

[lastchanceforhonor]

"These things are not for me," she said quietly. "These- the dresses and trappings of the women of your world, they are not for me. Those women have a choice, and it is not between killing their husbands or-" She stopped then. "And if he touches me again, I will find a way to kill him. I don't know how, but I will find a way."

She had seen it enough. She knew it just took one push at the right time, one sharp shove and then it was over. One slip, one gem that was not as it seemed, and it would be over, and it was ironic; if they had let her leave, if they had let her father leave or even take the Black, she would not know such things. "Do not let yourself get caught," she said after a moment, a backwards way of thanking him. She was too tied in knots to be polite, thinking of things she shouldn't, thinking of Tyrion, of Petyr, of Joffrey. "I would hate to lose you as a friend."

[wholeworldoutthere]

"You will not be losing me," came his immediate answer, and there was something about the way he said it that was less authoritative, and more this-is-the-way-things-are. It was the way things had been for over a thousand years; he was not going anywhere. But her words certainly served to help him see past the blind fury and into his actual circumstances. He would have to find the dwarf alone, safely away from anyone that might corroborate his statement, just in case compulsion failed.

"And he will not be touching you again. You will have a choice, Sansa, if I have any say in the matter." And he would, of course. What he wanted, he always got.

[lastchanceforhonor]

He did not understand that she didn't have a choice, that women from their world did not have choices unless they were Mormonts. They were Lady Hornwood, forced to marry the Bastard of Bolton who locked her in a tower, and starved her so she ate her own fingers. She had made the one choice she had, and it was for herself, for Winterfell-- she was not thinking of what had happened, but instead thinking of what her life was now.

"I can be his wife, or he can be dead - he is unwilling to allow our marriage to continue in a grey area until it can be annulled. I have made the choice, Klaus, and when I find a priest who can set it right, I will be free. I will be the Lady of Winterfell no matter what the crown says."

And she would take it with both hands, and not let it go. "Go, then. If you kill him-" She paused. "If you find a way to kill him, bring me his head, so I know he will not haunt me in the night." Her voice was odd as she said it, and she moved, back to her work, moving past him to open drawers, her delicate fingers shaking as she went through the various baubles and jewelry she had collected, much of it spirited away and never worn.

[wholeworldoutthere]

It was her last request that made Klaus look up at her with a glare. "I do not work for you, Sansa." There was steel in his voice that had been completely absent from hers, and he watched her with a scowl as she turned her back on him. "If I take his head, it will be to protect you, because I wish to, but do not expect me to do your bidding."

He had lived through the Middle Ages. This was the sort of request a dame would make of her knight, and this was not the sort of relationship he was willing to enter. If he wanted anything specific out of Sansa, he might have played the part, but as it was, there was no reason to.

[lastchanceforhonor]

She turned back when he spoke, and did not flinch from his glare, instead just raising her eyebrows, and there was the slightest tremor in her hand as she smoothed her hair from her face before she spoke quietly. "You are not my bannerman, Klaus. I realise that. I requested his head, if you manage to kill him, so that I would know that it was done. He has a... talent, for being difficult to kill." She paused, before she continued. "You have no reason to protect me." Any similarity to Robb was purely her own folly, she knew that. That his anger at her injury, that his auburn curls meant nothing.

She did not cry, for it served no purpose, because she had been through far more than this. Because a woman's tears were a weapon, because he was hardening her heart the way it must be, truly. She could trust no one except herself. "Thank you," she said then, her voice still odd, flat and steady. "For your concern."

[wholeworldoutthere]

"I have my own reasons to protect you," Klaus said, only very slightly mollified, if only because any further softening of his tone would have sounded like a lie, and he knew enough about her sort to know that.

He crossed over to her, and took her hand, the one not bandaged, making her turn to him and trying to meet her gaze. "You once told me I reminded you of your brother," he reminded her, searching her gaze with his own, unflinching one. "He would have taken your husband's head for his own reason, too." No matter how much he might have protested that it was for her, anyone taking somebody's head did it for their own reason.

[lastchanceforhonor]

"My brother did not come for me," she said, and that is what made her eyes shiny, not her husband, not this. "My brother was fighting his war, and left me alone in a lion's den." She did not want this, she did not wish to think of Robb, to face the fact that she had been left alone, that he did not even send for her or parlay for her or come to rescue her. "He fought his war, and died for it." It was her fault that Eddard Stark had died, and she wondered at times - the darkest of times, she wondered if that is why Robb did not find her, if that is why he left her in the South.

"It is not well to speak ill of the dead," she said then, taking back her hand. "Do what you will, and I appreciate your concern." She had no one, she had to remind herself that she had no one, and she would be stronger for it. She would be, it was what Petyr had told her again and again, although he had told her that she had only him.

It was a difficult thing, and she licked her lips. "Whatever you do for me is more than he had done," she said then, and she clasped her hands in front of her, ever proper even when she was not thinking of it. "So, thank you."

[wholeworldoutthere]

There was a point when any man, hybrid or otherwise, a thousand years old or not, would just about have had it with teenage girls and their... whatever it was they all thought they were doing. First Caroline all but breaking up with him via a note (although if he were perfectly honest, he was fairly certain that he would not have taken it better if she had simply told him, but he could at least have reacted to her), and now Sansa doing that thing that she did, that distance she put between herself and others. It wasn't the first time she did it between them, and Klaus suspected that it would not be the last, but at this stage, he had very little patience for it.

He was tired of growing to care and its coming back to bite him in the arse.

"I will let you know if I get my hands on him," Klaus simply told her, easily shifting back into something as distant as she was. He had had centuries of practice, and worked the shift smoothly, gave her a wan smile, and turned to go.