Drabble: Thaw
Title: Thaw
Author: mrstater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Sansa Stark/Tyrion Lannister, Arya Stark, Old Nan
Rating & Warnings: PG for innuendo
Format & Word Count: drabble, 467 words
Summary: A warm moment with her husband takes Sansa back to a colder one with her sister.
Author's Note: Written for polkadotsnplad for International Women's Day 2012. She requested a Sansa drabble for the prompt like ice.
Grief comes upon Sansa at the most unexpected moments, like ice.
One second she is laughing as Tyrion waggles his eyebrows, sheds his bedrobe and nightshirt, and then dives, comically, under the mounds of furs on their bed to pleasure her; the next she turns away from him, silent, her ardor for her husband cooled.
"If I'd known you'd react like that, sweetling, I never would have said a word about your feet," he says, his words measured, just barely containing his bewilderment. "Except to say that they're so lovely that I'm in danger of developing a foot fetish."
He slides up the bed to lay a slight hand upon her shoulder, and before Sansa can stop herself, she flinches. Tyrion's ensuing sigh is so like how it used to be in the Tower of the Hand, that she goes even colder inside.
But in some hidden corner of her mind, her father's voice--Ned's, not Petyr's--whispers to her that if ever she should find herself caught in the cold, to keep moving, and not to stop. To stop is to freeze. To die.
With effort, she rolls onto her back, and turns her head so that she and Tyrion face each other upon their pillows.
"It wasn't you, husband. It was my sister."
His brows knit on his misshapen forehead. "Arya?"
Sansa nods, and then the cold grips her chest again, her words dissolving into a silent swirl of steam in the air through which she sees Old Nan, clucking her tongue and saying, To bed with you now, sweet summer children. As if the two girls, one with neat red plaits and the other a rat's nest of dark hair, who scurry under the furs of their bed could possibly sleep after the tales she's just filled their heads with, Sansa too terrified to give herself over to sleep, Arya too inspired.
When Old Nan puts out the light, Arya says in an eerie hush, The long night begins, and pounces, a cat in the dark, and Sansa shrieks. Arya! Your feet are like ice! Put on stockings! But Arya doesn't do anything Sansa asks, only keeps putting her freezing feet on Sansa's legs and talking nonsense about being an Other come to turn her into a wight, until finally it is Sansa who is resigned to leave the warmth of the bed to rifle through her drawers for a pair of stockings to armor her from the mischief of a little sister who, by the time she returns to bed, has fallen fast asleep, snoring.
The warmth of Tyrion's palm cupping her cheek thaws her enough to speak. "Now that your sister is gone…Do you regret spending so much time hating her?"
"Alas, my love…for some of us the winter will never end."
Author: mrstater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Sansa Stark/Tyrion Lannister, Arya Stark, Old Nan
Rating & Warnings: PG for innuendo
Format & Word Count: drabble, 467 words
Summary: A warm moment with her husband takes Sansa back to a colder one with her sister.
Author's Note: Written for polkadotsnplad for International Women's Day 2012. She requested a Sansa drabble for the prompt like ice.
Grief comes upon Sansa at the most unexpected moments, like ice.
One second she is laughing as Tyrion waggles his eyebrows, sheds his bedrobe and nightshirt, and then dives, comically, under the mounds of furs on their bed to pleasure her; the next she turns away from him, silent, her ardor for her husband cooled.
"If I'd known you'd react like that, sweetling, I never would have said a word about your feet," he says, his words measured, just barely containing his bewilderment. "Except to say that they're so lovely that I'm in danger of developing a foot fetish."
He slides up the bed to lay a slight hand upon her shoulder, and before Sansa can stop herself, she flinches. Tyrion's ensuing sigh is so like how it used to be in the Tower of the Hand, that she goes even colder inside.
But in some hidden corner of her mind, her father's voice--Ned's, not Petyr's--whispers to her that if ever she should find herself caught in the cold, to keep moving, and not to stop. To stop is to freeze. To die.
With effort, she rolls onto her back, and turns her head so that she and Tyrion face each other upon their pillows.
"It wasn't you, husband. It was my sister."
His brows knit on his misshapen forehead. "Arya?"
Sansa nods, and then the cold grips her chest again, her words dissolving into a silent swirl of steam in the air through which she sees Old Nan, clucking her tongue and saying, To bed with you now, sweet summer children. As if the two girls, one with neat red plaits and the other a rat's nest of dark hair, who scurry under the furs of their bed could possibly sleep after the tales she's just filled their heads with, Sansa too terrified to give herself over to sleep, Arya too inspired.
When Old Nan puts out the light, Arya says in an eerie hush, The long night begins, and pounces, a cat in the dark, and Sansa shrieks. Arya! Your feet are like ice! Put on stockings! But Arya doesn't do anything Sansa asks, only keeps putting her freezing feet on Sansa's legs and talking nonsense about being an Other come to turn her into a wight, until finally it is Sansa who is resigned to leave the warmth of the bed to rifle through her drawers for a pair of stockings to armor her from the mischief of a little sister who, by the time she returns to bed, has fallen fast asleep, snoring.
The warmth of Tyrion's palm cupping her cheek thaws her enough to speak. "Now that your sister is gone…Do you regret spending so much time hating her?"
"Alas, my love…for some of us the winter will never end."