DD's Sock Puppetry #2: Silas and UnCat
Not requested so much as postulated. (I blame this on several of you IRC people. You know who you are.)
Catelyn didn’t sleep.
She could doze, but true sleep had been taken from her when Lord Beric raised her from the dead, and it seemed that trait at least remained with her here. When her face had still been ruined, she had prowled the castle at night when no one could see her, but she had never dared go far for fear of getting lost. Very often she had gone to the roof, to sit and watch the stars--the constellations were far different from those of Westeros, and she amused herself by naming all those she could find. The cold did not bother her; though her sense of touch had returned somewhat with the healing of her skin, things like pain and cold still did not register as they once had.
She stood there now, at the very edge of the roof, watching the moon as it sailed its slow course across the sky. It was…peaceful, being out at night here, and peace was something Catelyn had thought she would never feel again.
Much to her surprise, footsteps sounded softly on the stone behind her, their uneven pattern betraying a slight limp. She turned, curious, and found herself confronted with perhaps the most peculiar man she had ever laid eyes on. He was tall, far taller than any man she had known--the people of Westeros were, on the whole, rather shorter than people here. His face was white as…well, as hers, but his hair was just as pale, and his eyes--good gods, his eyes were red. For a moment she froze, but some instinct told her that, at least for now, this man was no threat to her.
Silas, for his part, was equally startled. Unable to sleep, he had thought to take a walk, and had--somehow--wound up on the roof. He hadn’t expected to find anyone else up here, however.
“Pardon me, Mademoiselle. I did not mean to disturb you. I did not think anyone else would be about this late.” She was (naturally) much shorter than he, with long hair of a red so dark it was almost auburn, and eyes nearly as disturbing as his own--the pale eyes of a corpse, that nevertheless saw him.
“I did not, either,” Catelyn said. She didn’t know what ‘mademoiselle’ meant, but she’d heard so many different honorifics that she assumed it must be yet another one. “I often come up here at night--it is a good place to think, undistracted.”
Undistracted thought was, perhaps, not what Silas ought to be seeking at this point. “I will go if you wish, Mademoiselle--I do not want to disturb you.”
Undeniably unsettling as his appearance might be, Catelyn did not find his presence an intrusion. Something in his bearing and posture made her think that perhaps he needed to be up here as much as she did. “It is no trouble, mister--?” She left the question hanging, wondering what sort of name a man such as he would have. ‘Mister’ was an honorific she had picked up from Sidney Reilly, and she was still unused to it.
“Silas, Mademoiselle. Just Silas.” Catelyn had never seen anyone stand so very still--had she not known better, she might have taken him for a statue.
“Silas.” It was an odd name, but then so many here seemed strange to her. “I am Catelyn. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Silas.” She’d left off the ‘Lady’ for some time now; it was a title without meaning, here, something she had discarded when she left Westeros. Lady Stark belonged to Winterfell; Catelyn belonged here.
Silas stared, regarding her quizzically. He was still unused to the idea that anyone might not mind his presence, but she truly seemed to mean what she said. With a mental shrug he made his silent way to the edge of the roof, peering down over the short stone balustrade. Well, it was short to him; to any normal person it was around chest-height. The land below was rendered silver by the setting moon; an eerie ghost landscape that looked only half real, so still and so soundless did it lie.
For a long moment they stood in silence; neither were creatures of many words. Catelyn, fully a foot shorter than Silas, was not wholly at ease beside him, but then a great many people were not at ease around her.
Silas, for his part, couldn’t help but stare, and though he tried to be covert about it he failed miserably. She looked uncannily like his angel, Camilla--the one who had been so kind at his Sorting. Catelyn, however, was obviously human--more, she looked as though her life had not been easy. Her face was unnaturally white, with several faint, pale scars running from her forehead down to her right cheek, as though something had tried to tear her face apart. And--was that a scar across her throat? It would seem she had arrived here as he did, then.
Catelyn was fully aware of his fixated stare. It was unnerving, but not as much as it perhaps might have been--she’d been stared at quite a bit, before her face had been fixed, and at least he didn’t look like he was going to be sick.
“Where have you come from, Mister Silas?” she asked. Her voice was oddly rough, he thought--almost gravelly. Whoever had slit her throat--and he was almost sure that was how she had died--had cut deeply indeed.
“Far away,” he said, and he did not mean it geographically. “I think I still have not realized just how far. I died, and then I was here, and I don’t know just what happened in between.”
Catelyn smiled, a dry, somewhat twisted smile. “Thus have many of us arrived.” Much to her surprise, creepy staring or no, she did not feel uncomfortable around Silas. He was quiet, as was she, and though he stared there was nothing hostile or unfriendly in it. She touched her face, lightly. “At least your scars do not show.”
No, his scars didn’t show. Most of them he’d acquired in life, not death, but the most refined of tortures would not get him to admit that to anyone outside of Opus Dei. This woman--Catelyn--might not be an angel, but she looked so like Camilla that he had to keep silent, about his scars and many other things.
“Where did you come from, Madem--Catelyn?” Her accent was unlike any he had ever heard, and by her dress--heavy dark cloak, almost medieval in style, over a long gown equally dark--he wondered if she might be from some other world.
She looked at him, her pale-filmed eyes searching a bit more keenly than he would have liked. She looked, he thought, like she could very well guess all sorts of things he would keep secret, but if this was the case she gave no sign. “The land of Westeros,” she said. “Far beyond the bounds of this world. I do not know how, or why, but then there are many here who could say the same.” Now she looked away, out over the grounds. “My daughters are here, the daughters I had feared dead. This is a good place, even if at times it seems a bit--crowded.” Hence her trips to the roof.
Ah. Madame Catelyn it would seem, rather than Mademoiselle. Scars aside, she had to be at least ten years younger than he, if not more, but perhaps in her world people married earlier. “How many children do you have?” he asked curiously.
“I had five.” Even yet the loss of Robb hurt. “I had thought them all dead, before I came here, but four of them yet live. My eldest son, and my husband…it is a long and unpleasant story, which I will not burden you with, but they both perished in the war that tore Westeros apart. My youngest sons are still in Westeros, but I have been told they are safe, which is…all I can ask, for now.”
Silas, who was indirectly responsible for the death of one parent, and quite directly responsible for the death of the other, said nothing. There was a pain in Catelyn’s rough voice for which he knew there was no comfort. The silence stretched, but not awkwardly; it was so much a part of both their temperaments that was as natural a state as any.
“What of you?” Catelyn asked at last. She of course knew nothing of monks, and the significance of his robe was lost on her. “Have you any family?”
Silas looked at her. Of course, she could not be expected to understand, could she? “I am a monk,” he said. “I belong to a religious order that does not permit its members to marry.” He didn’t quite know how to explain the Church to a complete outsider, but Catelyn understood.
“We have similar orders in Westeros,” she said. “Septons, they are called--men in the service of the Seven. Septas as well--the Septons’ female counterparts.” Catelyn, mother of five, could not imagine a life without children, but obviously it appealed to some. Then again, she had had no choice but to marry; perhaps it was easier for those not so bound to choose otherwise.
Seven…septon…monks and nuns, more or less, give or take a title and a deity. It was almost a relief, to hear that some things were universal--that faith, whatever its name, had servants in more worlds than this. It still went against Silas’s grain, to contemplate any faith other than that of the Church, but in this place that attitude would serve nothing but trouble. His convictions had not wavered, but already they were beginning to broaden; meeting dragons, a Pegasus, and Christ Himself would give even the most narrow-minded fanatic cause for thought. Fanatic Silas might be, and more than half crazed, but he was not stupid.
He was looking at her again. Catelyn wondered what he sought, that he felt the need to stare so--she had a suspicion he watched everything as intently as he watched her now. He was hunting for something, and she wondered if even he knew just what he was searching for. Peace, perhaps. The same thing so many of us seek. Strangely, she did not think it rude--perhaps she had done it herself, before now.
“Tell me about your children,” he said abruptly. “Please.” The word was added almost as an afterthought.
Catelyn needed no urging. Death-glazed eyes wandered to the Forbidden Forest, and for the second time she smiled. “Arya and Sansa, my daughters, both arrived here before I did,” she said. “Sansa is the elder, and has been a lady in every sense since she was small. I fear the last years have not been kind to her--she is a woman too soon, with cares and fears no girl of her age should know. She is little younger than I was, when I married, but her life these last years has to have been a nightmare.
“She, I think, is disturbed by me--when I first arrived here, I was a creature from a horror story, and seeing me so must have affected her deeply.” There was grief in those words, but Catelyn did not pause for long.
“Arya, my youngest, is as willful and stubborn as her father. She is a Stark to the bone, and I feel certain it helped her survive. Her strength is much different from Sansa’s--Sansa uses her courtesy as an armor, whereas Arya will attack head-on, and innocent bystanders beware. She…you must understand, when I came here, and up until very recently, I was foul as a corpse. I had died, and been resurrected, but all the damage done in those days I lay dead stayed with me. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for her, to see me that way, but…she came right up to me, just as she had when she was small, and embraced me….”
Only now did Catelyn fall silent, not trusting herself to speak further. Knowing Arya and Sansa were here, even if she had yet to see them face to face again, was a gift beyond measure. Bran and Rickon were safe beyond the Wall, and she lived in constant hope that one day they too would arrive here, as suddenly and inexplicably as she had.
She looked at her hands. Her fingers and palms were slashed with deep scars, scars that had nothing to do with her death--an assassin had been sent to kill her son, and she had fought his knife with her bare hands. Silas, who noticed everything, regarded them curiously.
Catelyn noticed him noticing. “My son Bran…someone came to kill him, for reasons I still do not understand. I stopped them.” Her fingers closed, hiding the deep white lines.
Once again, Silas said nothing for a long, long while. “Your children are lucky to have you,” he said at last. His own mother… “My mother died, because of me. My father blamed her for this--” he gestured to his paper-white face “--and beat her, and eventually killed her.” Only now did he look away, turning the terribly intense focus of his stare outward. “I killed my father. Stabbed him to death. I was seven.”
He looked back at her, half defiantly, as though daring her to condemn him--as though part of him wanted her to.
Catelyn looked right back at him, her milky dead eyes seeming to see right through to the back of his skull. “Revenge is not always bad, Silas,” she said quietly. “The Septons teach that we should always forgive, but forgiveness is not always possible. It is only when you let it poison you that vengeance becomes an evil.” Septa Mordane would have been horrified if she’d heard that, but Septa Mordane was dead, killed in the very first days of the war. Those who did not fight died--those who fought at least had a chance.
Silas thought he had been surprised at his Sorting, when people were actually kind to him, but that was nothing to how stunned he was now. Of all the people he would expect to actually endorse revenge…well, a mother of five was not among them. She knew, didn’t she? She knew the fury, the sheer, burning hatred that made you want to inflict as much damage as possible, to hurt back as much as you were hurt. For a moment he could do nothing more than stare down at her. She was not an angel--she was very, very human, in a way he had never yet encountered in anyone outside of himself, and she understood even the things he did not say.
The faintest trace of a smile crossed Catelyn’s face. “Revenge is not only the province of men,” she said. “All creatures who hurt will seek it. The trick is to know when to let go.” And how far…no matter what peace she had found, there were still people she would not hesitate to murder, should they wander within her reach. And that was something he would understand.
Silas matched her ghostly smile with one of his own. “I will…keep that in mind, Mademoiselle Catelyn. It is…perfect advice, for an imperfect world.”
Neither said anything more, but watched in companionable silence until the moon had set and the faint greyness of dawn touched the horizon. At last, by unspoken consensus, they left for the warmth of the castle, parting ways at the main staircase.
Silas watched her go, reflecting that, strange as this place undeniably was, it just might be possible for it to someday feel like home.
Catelyn didn’t sleep.
She could doze, but true sleep had been taken from her when Lord Beric raised her from the dead, and it seemed that trait at least remained with her here. When her face had still been ruined, she had prowled the castle at night when no one could see her, but she had never dared go far for fear of getting lost. Very often she had gone to the roof, to sit and watch the stars--the constellations were far different from those of Westeros, and she amused herself by naming all those she could find. The cold did not bother her; though her sense of touch had returned somewhat with the healing of her skin, things like pain and cold still did not register as they once had.
She stood there now, at the very edge of the roof, watching the moon as it sailed its slow course across the sky. It was…peaceful, being out at night here, and peace was something Catelyn had thought she would never feel again.
Much to her surprise, footsteps sounded softly on the stone behind her, their uneven pattern betraying a slight limp. She turned, curious, and found herself confronted with perhaps the most peculiar man she had ever laid eyes on. He was tall, far taller than any man she had known--the people of Westeros were, on the whole, rather shorter than people here. His face was white as…well, as hers, but his hair was just as pale, and his eyes--good gods, his eyes were red. For a moment she froze, but some instinct told her that, at least for now, this man was no threat to her.
Silas, for his part, was equally startled. Unable to sleep, he had thought to take a walk, and had--somehow--wound up on the roof. He hadn’t expected to find anyone else up here, however.
“Pardon me, Mademoiselle. I did not mean to disturb you. I did not think anyone else would be about this late.” She was (naturally) much shorter than he, with long hair of a red so dark it was almost auburn, and eyes nearly as disturbing as his own--the pale eyes of a corpse, that nevertheless saw him.
“I did not, either,” Catelyn said. She didn’t know what ‘mademoiselle’ meant, but she’d heard so many different honorifics that she assumed it must be yet another one. “I often come up here at night--it is a good place to think, undistracted.”
Undistracted thought was, perhaps, not what Silas ought to be seeking at this point. “I will go if you wish, Mademoiselle--I do not want to disturb you.”
Undeniably unsettling as his appearance might be, Catelyn did not find his presence an intrusion. Something in his bearing and posture made her think that perhaps he needed to be up here as much as she did. “It is no trouble, mister--?” She left the question hanging, wondering what sort of name a man such as he would have. ‘Mister’ was an honorific she had picked up from Sidney Reilly, and she was still unused to it.
“Silas, Mademoiselle. Just Silas.” Catelyn had never seen anyone stand so very still--had she not known better, she might have taken him for a statue.
“Silas.” It was an odd name, but then so many here seemed strange to her. “I am Catelyn. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Silas.” She’d left off the ‘Lady’ for some time now; it was a title without meaning, here, something she had discarded when she left Westeros. Lady Stark belonged to Winterfell; Catelyn belonged here.
Silas stared, regarding her quizzically. He was still unused to the idea that anyone might not mind his presence, but she truly seemed to mean what she said. With a mental shrug he made his silent way to the edge of the roof, peering down over the short stone balustrade. Well, it was short to him; to any normal person it was around chest-height. The land below was rendered silver by the setting moon; an eerie ghost landscape that looked only half real, so still and so soundless did it lie.
For a long moment they stood in silence; neither were creatures of many words. Catelyn, fully a foot shorter than Silas, was not wholly at ease beside him, but then a great many people were not at ease around her.
Silas, for his part, couldn’t help but stare, and though he tried to be covert about it he failed miserably. She looked uncannily like his angel, Camilla--the one who had been so kind at his Sorting. Catelyn, however, was obviously human--more, she looked as though her life had not been easy. Her face was unnaturally white, with several faint, pale scars running from her forehead down to her right cheek, as though something had tried to tear her face apart. And--was that a scar across her throat? It would seem she had arrived here as he did, then.
Catelyn was fully aware of his fixated stare. It was unnerving, but not as much as it perhaps might have been--she’d been stared at quite a bit, before her face had been fixed, and at least he didn’t look like he was going to be sick.
“Where have you come from, Mister Silas?” she asked. Her voice was oddly rough, he thought--almost gravelly. Whoever had slit her throat--and he was almost sure that was how she had died--had cut deeply indeed.
“Far away,” he said, and he did not mean it geographically. “I think I still have not realized just how far. I died, and then I was here, and I don’t know just what happened in between.”
Catelyn smiled, a dry, somewhat twisted smile. “Thus have many of us arrived.” Much to her surprise, creepy staring or no, she did not feel uncomfortable around Silas. He was quiet, as was she, and though he stared there was nothing hostile or unfriendly in it. She touched her face, lightly. “At least your scars do not show.”
No, his scars didn’t show. Most of them he’d acquired in life, not death, but the most refined of tortures would not get him to admit that to anyone outside of Opus Dei. This woman--Catelyn--might not be an angel, but she looked so like Camilla that he had to keep silent, about his scars and many other things.
“Where did you come from, Madem--Catelyn?” Her accent was unlike any he had ever heard, and by her dress--heavy dark cloak, almost medieval in style, over a long gown equally dark--he wondered if she might be from some other world.
She looked at him, her pale-filmed eyes searching a bit more keenly than he would have liked. She looked, he thought, like she could very well guess all sorts of things he would keep secret, but if this was the case she gave no sign. “The land of Westeros,” she said. “Far beyond the bounds of this world. I do not know how, or why, but then there are many here who could say the same.” Now she looked away, out over the grounds. “My daughters are here, the daughters I had feared dead. This is a good place, even if at times it seems a bit--crowded.” Hence her trips to the roof.
Ah. Madame Catelyn it would seem, rather than Mademoiselle. Scars aside, she had to be at least ten years younger than he, if not more, but perhaps in her world people married earlier. “How many children do you have?” he asked curiously.
“I had five.” Even yet the loss of Robb hurt. “I had thought them all dead, before I came here, but four of them yet live. My eldest son, and my husband…it is a long and unpleasant story, which I will not burden you with, but they both perished in the war that tore Westeros apart. My youngest sons are still in Westeros, but I have been told they are safe, which is…all I can ask, for now.”
Silas, who was indirectly responsible for the death of one parent, and quite directly responsible for the death of the other, said nothing. There was a pain in Catelyn’s rough voice for which he knew there was no comfort. The silence stretched, but not awkwardly; it was so much a part of both their temperaments that was as natural a state as any.
“What of you?” Catelyn asked at last. She of course knew nothing of monks, and the significance of his robe was lost on her. “Have you any family?”
Silas looked at her. Of course, she could not be expected to understand, could she? “I am a monk,” he said. “I belong to a religious order that does not permit its members to marry.” He didn’t quite know how to explain the Church to a complete outsider, but Catelyn understood.
“We have similar orders in Westeros,” she said. “Septons, they are called--men in the service of the Seven. Septas as well--the Septons’ female counterparts.” Catelyn, mother of five, could not imagine a life without children, but obviously it appealed to some. Then again, she had had no choice but to marry; perhaps it was easier for those not so bound to choose otherwise.
Seven…septon…monks and nuns, more or less, give or take a title and a deity. It was almost a relief, to hear that some things were universal--that faith, whatever its name, had servants in more worlds than this. It still went against Silas’s grain, to contemplate any faith other than that of the Church, but in this place that attitude would serve nothing but trouble. His convictions had not wavered, but already they were beginning to broaden; meeting dragons, a Pegasus, and Christ Himself would give even the most narrow-minded fanatic cause for thought. Fanatic Silas might be, and more than half crazed, but he was not stupid.
He was looking at her again. Catelyn wondered what he sought, that he felt the need to stare so--she had a suspicion he watched everything as intently as he watched her now. He was hunting for something, and she wondered if even he knew just what he was searching for. Peace, perhaps. The same thing so many of us seek. Strangely, she did not think it rude--perhaps she had done it herself, before now.
“Tell me about your children,” he said abruptly. “Please.” The word was added almost as an afterthought.
Catelyn needed no urging. Death-glazed eyes wandered to the Forbidden Forest, and for the second time she smiled. “Arya and Sansa, my daughters, both arrived here before I did,” she said. “Sansa is the elder, and has been a lady in every sense since she was small. I fear the last years have not been kind to her--she is a woman too soon, with cares and fears no girl of her age should know. She is little younger than I was, when I married, but her life these last years has to have been a nightmare.
“She, I think, is disturbed by me--when I first arrived here, I was a creature from a horror story, and seeing me so must have affected her deeply.” There was grief in those words, but Catelyn did not pause for long.
“Arya, my youngest, is as willful and stubborn as her father. She is a Stark to the bone, and I feel certain it helped her survive. Her strength is much different from Sansa’s--Sansa uses her courtesy as an armor, whereas Arya will attack head-on, and innocent bystanders beware. She…you must understand, when I came here, and up until very recently, I was foul as a corpse. I had died, and been resurrected, but all the damage done in those days I lay dead stayed with me. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for her, to see me that way, but…she came right up to me, just as she had when she was small, and embraced me….”
Only now did Catelyn fall silent, not trusting herself to speak further. Knowing Arya and Sansa were here, even if she had yet to see them face to face again, was a gift beyond measure. Bran and Rickon were safe beyond the Wall, and she lived in constant hope that one day they too would arrive here, as suddenly and inexplicably as she had.
She looked at her hands. Her fingers and palms were slashed with deep scars, scars that had nothing to do with her death--an assassin had been sent to kill her son, and she had fought his knife with her bare hands. Silas, who noticed everything, regarded them curiously.
Catelyn noticed him noticing. “My son Bran…someone came to kill him, for reasons I still do not understand. I stopped them.” Her fingers closed, hiding the deep white lines.
Once again, Silas said nothing for a long, long while. “Your children are lucky to have you,” he said at last. His own mother… “My mother died, because of me. My father blamed her for this--” he gestured to his paper-white face “--and beat her, and eventually killed her.” Only now did he look away, turning the terribly intense focus of his stare outward. “I killed my father. Stabbed him to death. I was seven.”
He looked back at her, half defiantly, as though daring her to condemn him--as though part of him wanted her to.
Catelyn looked right back at him, her milky dead eyes seeming to see right through to the back of his skull. “Revenge is not always bad, Silas,” she said quietly. “The Septons teach that we should always forgive, but forgiveness is not always possible. It is only when you let it poison you that vengeance becomes an evil.” Septa Mordane would have been horrified if she’d heard that, but Septa Mordane was dead, killed in the very first days of the war. Those who did not fight died--those who fought at least had a chance.
Silas thought he had been surprised at his Sorting, when people were actually kind to him, but that was nothing to how stunned he was now. Of all the people he would expect to actually endorse revenge…well, a mother of five was not among them. She knew, didn’t she? She knew the fury, the sheer, burning hatred that made you want to inflict as much damage as possible, to hurt back as much as you were hurt. For a moment he could do nothing more than stare down at her. She was not an angel--she was very, very human, in a way he had never yet encountered in anyone outside of himself, and she understood even the things he did not say.
The faintest trace of a smile crossed Catelyn’s face. “Revenge is not only the province of men,” she said. “All creatures who hurt will seek it. The trick is to know when to let go.” And how far…no matter what peace she had found, there were still people she would not hesitate to murder, should they wander within her reach. And that was something he would understand.
Silas matched her ghostly smile with one of his own. “I will…keep that in mind, Mademoiselle Catelyn. It is…perfect advice, for an imperfect world.”
Neither said anything more, but watched in companionable silence until the moon had set and the faint greyness of dawn touched the horizon. At last, by unspoken consensus, they left for the warmth of the castle, parting ways at the main staircase.
Silas watched her go, reflecting that, strange as this place undeniably was, it just might be possible for it to someday feel like home.