Title: The Stranger Waits
Author:
firedew1Summary: Sansa becomes deathly ill while still a prisoner of the Lannisters. Despairing and with nothing left, she sees it as her way out. But can she still find a reason to live? Set during ACOK.
Rating: T
Warnings: STRONG LANGUAGE. Can't say that enough.
Pairing: Sansa/Sandor
Length: ~1,700 words
Link:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9974451/1/The-Stranger-WaitsDisclaimer: All Game of Thrones characters belong to G.R.R. Martin. Not for profit, just fun.
Comments: A little side trip between chapters of other things I felt the need to take. Enjoy!
“Fire … I’m on fire.” Panting with every breath, Sansa frantically groped toward … something. What was it? She no longer remembered, yet she continued to moan. Sweat coalesced into perfect, hot beads along her forehead, neck, and along the refined hollow between her bosom, her nightshift soaked to the smallest thread. The bed linens were a loss, in no better condition than the flimsy garment that barely protected her modesty but was all that she could stand. Squirming in her bed against the soft hands that held her down, every movement rewarded with exhaustion and agony, Sansa burned.
“Rest now, milady. Shh. Rest. Rest. The maester is coming.”
“No ... no … I don’t want … don’t want to ...”
A wet cloth was draped over her forehead and moved swiftly to spread the cooling liquid over her cheeks and neck while Shae tried to soothe her, but there was no disguising the worry in her tone. Sansa was beyond sense. Her mind and body raging with fever, she sought out the man standing at the entrance to her bedchamber. Sometimes shrouded in white and sometimes not, he was otherwise a constant. He stood there watching her, never moving, never speaking, for … days now? A week? Or had it only been hours? A black figure surrounded by darkness and candlelight that absorbed them both. No voice. No face. Every face. At once every man she had ever known and a stranger. “Take me,” she said in gasping, breathless supplication. She knew his name; he had to hear her. “Take me. Please, take me.” Gods, please take me.
“No, no, milady. You must not say such things,” Shae said urgently, leaning over Sansa as her vision began to swim. Sansa’s eyelids fluttered as the abyss beckoned. Her handmaiden shook her. “Lady Sansa, you must stay awake.”
“What did she say?” An immature, frightened voice carried across the bed. Another maidservant perhaps. Sansa was past caring. Reeling, she flailed uselessly against Shae’s sure grip.
“Let me go …” She again sought out her silent visitor. “Please, I have nothing left. Take pity and let me die.”
“Who is she talking to?”
“Never you mind, you idiot child,” Shae snapped, the alluring lilt of her accent beautiful despite her ire. “I need you to run and fetch the maester. You pull that wrinkled old pig off whatever whore he’s fucking and tell him Lady Sansa is very ill and needs him immediately. Then you go to the kitchen, get more water and ice. Bring it back here.”
“Ice?”
“As much as they’ll allow, now hurry!” Shae tugged on Sansa’s arms and alternately gripped her sides, legs, and back in an effort to get her up. Even as her feet met the cold stone floor, pain shot across Sansa’s ribs at her desperate maneuvering. She moaned, short and weak, her head lolling backward. “I am sorry, milady, but we need to get you to the bath.”
A small, pathetic noise escaped her lips just as she went utterly limp. Sansa fell forward, careening toward the floor with only Shae there to stop her descent. The world melted away to the sound of Shae’s screams for help.
The next thing Sansa knew she was being hauled up into powerful arms. The Stranger has decided to carry me away from here. Finally. Unabated heat pressed in on her, but oblivion was a taste of bliss that she was loathe to part from.
“Seven hells, you’re burning up, girl.”
He reeked of stale wine and his voice was as harsh as stone grating against stone, but Sansa felt comfort tucked inside his arms, held as though she weighed nothing. This was the safest place she could be. No one could touch her now that death had come to claim her.
“What in hells happened?”
Her legs swung like pendulums, dangling over his forearms, as he hurriedly carried her across her room. Sansa’s bleary eyes peered over his shoulder, encased in armor. The grim faceless form remained where it was. Does he know he’s left his shadow behind?
“She said she was feeling poorly this morning, so she kept to her bed. I checked in on her around midday and brought her a meal, but when I came again a little while ago, she was already like this,” Shae said quickly, trotting after them.
“Where the fuck is Pycelle?” The bald anger in his voice terrified Sansa to her core, but she only burrowed deeper into his grasp. She was safe. Deep down, she knew she was safe.
“I sent word earlier, but he has yet to come see her.” He came to a stop and Sansa felt Shae’s hands grasping at her once again. “Come, milady, we’ve got to get you cooled off.”
Sansa didn’t respond until he started to lower her to the ground. “No … no, no … no, no, no …” she pleaded in a barely coherent stream, using what little strength at her disposal to cling to his neck. “Don’t make me stay. Not here. Don’t make me stay. Please. It’s so hot …”
“Easy, girl,” he said.
Raving and withering beneath the pulsing heat, she found his eyes, dark slates of grey trained solely on her face. “You know … don’t you?” Her hand gently touched his terrible scars, lightly tracing the ripples of burnt skin. She was almost surprised to find them as real flesh underneath her fingertips. “So hot …”
Her grisly savior stood motionless for protracted instant, almost stunned, and then with a twisted hate-filled grimace, he caught her wrist and shoved it away. Forgetting any delicacy, he plopped her into the bath with Shae fumbling to catch her.
Sansa cried out, a shriek that echoed off stone. Lying inside the familiar pool, empty though it was, she instinctually curled in on herself, though that only made the pain worse and another whine tore from her throat.
“What is wrong with you?” Shae shouted.
Then, in a rush, she was savagely pinned against the wall opposite where Sansa lay, the man’s hand at her neck. “Watch your tone, wench, or I’ll see to it the king hears about how you neglected your duties. How you left his betrothed alone as she got sicker and sicker. Imagine how he’d repay your fine service.”
“Empty threats don’t frighten me, Dog; you’d sooner slit my throat yourself.”
The sound he made sounded more like a hiss than a laugh. “Aye, that I would. Slight creature like yourself wouldn’t even slow the blade.”
“Get on with it then,” she said. “Kill me or allow me to help her.”
The man tossed a callous glance over his shoulder at Sansa. She bit her lip, starting to shake all over, out of control. Stop. It’s only supposed to be me. Just me. Don’t hurt her.
The room was filled with only breath and silence.
“Help her, then.”
Moments later, a basin’s worth of water poured over Sansa’s shuddering limbs and pooled beneath her. She bit back another scream as the shock of the cold against her skin caused her trembling to double. Water splashed over every part of her body, washing away the pasty feel of sweat. Sansa lifted her tired eyes to see him standing over her, an implacable fortress of ever-breeding hatred, though the look he gave her was queerly the opposite. Almost soft, like a solitary flake of ash floating away from a bonfire.
“I didn’t mean to hurt the girl.”
Staying close, Shae didn’t look up. Her mouth pulled tight, she merely continued dutifully splashing and spreading the chilled water over her. “It is not a hard thing to do. I can scarcely keep from hurting her myself.”
Then, with a gentle whisper, Shae asked Sansa to lie still. As Sansa’s breaths came and went in arduous puffs, her handmaiden proceeded to pull sopping tendrils of her long auburn hair away from her shoulders and back. Her thin shift was glued to her like a second skin, the pale color almost translucent in the water. Completely sodden, there could be little of Sansa left to the imagination, yet the man’s eyes did not wander as so many men’s often did--his as well, she dimly recalled. His turbulent gaze looked only to the collage of dark purple and black bruises all over her back and side. “The latest gifts from our beloved King, courtesy of Ser Meryn. They have not yet had a chance to mend. I thought ...” Shae looked downcast. “I thought she was pretending to be ill, so she would not have to face the king again so soon.”
“You’d best guard your tongue, wench. A charge of treason will get you more than my knife, and the walls have ears.”
“Then the walls have heard her screams as often as I. More. They should have eyes as well, so as to see what your illustrious king has wrought on a girl with no one to protect her,” she said. “They teach highborn ladies from the beginning to sing, to dance, to sew, to bow to their lord husband’s whim with a blush and a smile … but they do not train them for this. If it were me in her place, I might want to die, too.”
Steam rose from Sansa’s body as water sloshed over her again, her bloodshot eyes locked in a hypnotic stare at the figure looming over her. She couldn’t bear Shae’s pity, but him … he knew … he knew. She couldn’t remember his name, wasn’t sure if he were real or another nightmare come to taunt and humiliate her, but she remembered him. He was coarse, bitter, and cruel, but he knew what she wanted, had once longed for release as much--likely more--than she. While his expression was steeped in darkness and growing darker by the second, her lips began to whisper to him, manic and unrelenting, repeating over and over and over prayers no septa had ever taught her. All of them consisted of one word.
Please.