City of Cinder, City of Ash (1/3)
Part One: City of Cinder
Rating:M
Warnings: non-con, graphic violence, physical and sexual abuse
Pairing: SanSan
Word Count: 7,042
Summary: Raised far away from the intrigues, lies and deception of Washington DC, Sansa Stark is left to fend for herself against the Lannisters in the ashes of the life she has always known. But is she truly alone in her fight? Modern!au.
I want to thank my big sister message_send for listening to me bitch constantly about this. Love you!
:::
Like all good stories, hers starts with a death. Three, actually.
:::
She and her father used to play chess every night after dinner. Back when they lived in the house in Maine, with the whitewashed clapboard siding and dark slate roof. The house that looked over the lake, the house with the dogs, the house with her mother and father and sister and brothers.
They were happy, then.
Daddy had taught Sansa when she was young, taught it to her as she sat on his lap in her turquoise bathing suit one summer evening shortly after Ricky had been born. She was eight.
Her hand-thin, fragile, one long scar curving up the crease of her index finger and her thumb-lingers in the air above the white porcelain pawn, before settling over it, the piece cool and smooth under her skin.
She feels poorly for it, hesitating before pushing it forward two squares.
She opens the game using the elephant gambit, staring blankly across the polished marble board, eyes resting unfocused on the leather-backed chair opposite her own. Imagines that it is her Daddy sitting there, with his kind reserved smile, calloused fingers resting behind his line of bishops and rooks.
Ned Stark died two months ago. Suicide, they had told her. Betrayed his country and hung himself from the pipes in his cell. Might as well have beheaded him, the pictures had been splashed across every DC tabloid. It was a public hanging. She wishes to cry but has forgotten how.
Suicide.
She does not believe these people’s words anymore. She believes nothing, anymore.
When she was small, and they would play after dinner in the evenings of those far gone, those dense summer evenings, she would make up stories to go along with their games. Tales of stoic kings and valiant queens and brave knights and wise bishops and the noble pawns who died for their countries.
Poor and sad, they were.
But they had to die so that her king could win.
But her king died.
She had played with Dad at this board once while President Baratheon was alive, during one of their first nights in Washington, after dining with the first family. She had flirted with Joffrey and impressed Cersei and played with Myrcella and had groaned when Dad had asked her to play with him.
Sansa cannot remember where Arya was during all of this.
Such frantically happy days, before Robert Baratheon’s assassination.
Sansa questions that now, too.
The king, she thinks. The ultimate goal-keep yours alive and topple the other. But, ultimately, useless. Others must do his long-range work for him.
The knight, her hand flits from piece to piece, weak and listless like an injured bird. Irrational and erratic, but it can surprise you.
She finds herself to be humming, off-key. It’s some jaunty, sharp melody she cannot recognize, but twines through her head like madness. Like anxiety. Like something hard and black and has curled up in her bones for the winter. It is January now, the month of new starts and grey snow and Election Day.
She flinches, pain shooting up her leg when she twists her foot at the wrong angle.
The White House is very beautiful. The first lady decorated the Residence well. Warm woods and earthy tones accented with sharp, vibrant reds and golds. It is a place that masquerades as a home and is so very unlike the lake house in Maine with its white walls and cotton curtains and old wood floors and touches of Momma’s South Carolina roots.
The rook guards the king. The steadfast man-at-arms, who would die for his ruler. But now she knows that loyalties can be bought and sold like cattle at an auction. The men who served at Robert Baratheon’s pleasure did so at the expense of Tywin Lannister. They shuffled him about from square to square at their behest. Aligned him to be taken out by the shadow bishop, like a novice player easily swayed into checkmate.
She thinks of Sandor Clegane, who wiped the blood from her lip with his handkerchief.
And then she stops thinking about him.
Eyes fogging over, she looks back at the board, where she has played both sides into a stalemate.
The queen, the most powerful piece on the board. All other pieces try and emulate her power, her power on the board and on the king, but fail. Cersei Lannister taught her that. The Lannister Political Dynasty from Texas. Tywin Lannister, the reformed son of a Nazi soldier, his mother had escaped in time to bear him on American soil before dying, leaving him to be raised by an aunt. A true American feel-good story, the Lannisters. All they needed was the marriage to make the king theirs. A marriage, and three deaths.
Jon Arryn. Who she never met, but heard of her entire life. Her father and President Baratheon’s platoon commander in the Gulf War.
Robert Baratheon. Fickle, and unobservant. But not whole-heartedly a bad man. But a man who probably could have been, if he had made a bigger effort.
Ned Stark. Vice President after Jon Arryn, who went South to serve his brother in arms. Who uncovered Lannister treason. Who was a good man. Who died, like the rest.
Sansa’s fingers graze the pawn again, almost of their own volition. She doesn’t control much of her life anymore, and now her body seems to be betraying her in odd ways.
(She tries to forget the feel of Joffrey’s fingers on her hips and his wet breath on her neck and the spark in her belly as she cried and could not believe this was happening to her and it was making her feel like this and she didn’t like it didn’t like it didn’t like it and he laughed at her and left her bloody and bruised in her bedroom in the Residence.)
(Clegane had been there, mournful hound-dog eyes watching her as she stood, shaky as a newborn calf, and limped into her bathroom, before the door closed behind Joff and he slipped out of view.)
The pawn, though.
She trudges along after her first stuttering jump. No one really pays attention to her, but manipulates her just the same. Other pieces block her slow path in their own frenzy to take the others out. They won’t pay attention to her until she’s gotten too close, too dangerous.
Until she can look a Lannister in the eye with a knife in her fist, and is close enough to bring it to their throat.
The pawn can be wild.
If you don’t pay close enough attention, she can become the queen.
But she has to survive, first.
Her humming grows frantic, more crazed. Sansa has done as told-she has put on one of her shimmery gowns and covered her blemished and bruised skin with her expensive make up and has put on the jewels that were a gift from her keepers. She is a glimmering DC socialite tonight, not the scared college student hiding in the shadows of the liars and thieves who shuffle through the White House every day, petitioning President Tywin Lannister for power and things.
Joffrey’s prize. Sansa Stark, the daughter of the traitor. The good daughter of the traitor, who is a quiet and complacent pawn who will dance with Joffrey Baratheon at his birthday gala.
His father had been a king. Her father and Jon Arryn, rooks.
The metaphor stutters to a halt in her head, fades and curls at the edges and burns from the outside in-she is not living in a fairytale. This is not one of the movies she would curl up with Momma to watch on rainy days. This is real, and being beautiful or being good in school will not be enough save her.
She must keep her head down.
And do as she’s told.
Because President Lannister has informed the Secret Service and the three-letter-men and the metro police to arrest her if she tries to leave the city.
“The caged bird sings, and it is not so pretty,” a voice from the doorway rasps.
She flinches, and frowns internally, but does not look up. She does stop humming. She does not, however, answer him. She moves the black bishop, pushing him halfway across the board.
The white knight follows him, and she removes the bishop from the board.
Clegane laughs, his hulking frame encompassing all but a fraction of the doorway. “What happened to your voice, little bird?”
Sansa makes an irritated noise low in her throat, hand dancing over the pieces as she contemplates potential moves. “One moment, if you would, Agent Clegane.”
“I’m not Secret Service, girl.”
“It would seem that you are these days,” she answers, plucking the black knight from obscurity and checking the white king. She looks at his face, eyes briefly sticking on the inflamed scars on the right side of his face before flickering back down to the board. “They gave you a suit and earpiece and sunglasses and everything.”
White king moves. Black pawn advances. Bishop blocks pawn. Rook takes bishop. Pawn moves forward.
Check.
The bodyguard who Joffrey refers to as his dog chuckles, a low and harsh sound, like wet gravel under a tire.
(Sansa brushes away the memory of the hearse containing her father’s body pulling out of Leavenworth, the CNN logo on the bottom of the screen, the words TRAITOR EX-VP NED STARK HANGS SELF scrolling unselfconsciously across the bottom.)
She continues moving the pieces mindlessly, the ghost of her father smiling proudly at her from across the board.
“You good at that, girl?” he asks, looking as if he is a moment away from yanking her out of her seat and dragging her downstairs to the party.
Sansa looks down, and moves the pawn to the end, and replaces it with the black’s missing queen.
Checkmate.
She doesn’t answer.
“Come on, girl,” he growls, one huge hand curling around her bare bicep and pulling her roughly out of her chair. “East Room, now. Don’t make it more difficult for yourself, not tonight.”
One hour ago, Speaker of the House Stannis Baratheon declared Tywin Lannister’s presidency unconstitutional. In the sixty minutes hence, twenty-one states mobilized their national guards. Two states declared independence.
And all of America is at war.
:::
The East Room is opulent. It was built to be. The largest room of the White House, it is used for large press briefings, concerts, ceremonies, and occasionally, a large gala dinner. It houses the White House’s oldest possession, the Landsowne Portrait of George Washington, painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1797, the same portrait that Dolly Madison dragged out with her when the British set the White House ablaze in 1812.
Originally to be called the “Public Audience Hall,” the founder of the New Republic…
Sansa’s train of thought peters to a stop when the Secret Service agents manning the doors opened them for her, unsmiling and emotionless. She had learned from them in these months passed. Shirk emotion to preform your duties.
Even when Robert Baratheon’s brains had bloomed across the pavement they hadn’t shed their calm, not as the sniper continued picking people off one by one, grey matter splattering like dirty, wet snow on the sidewalk. Even as the memory decayed into a frantic blur, Sansa can remember the look on Dad’s agent’s face as he hurled them into their limousine.
Guarded. Calm. This was something they had learned by rote how to do. So she too could learn her role to the point of detachment.
She needs not be announced for her entrance, not like at Daddy’s confirmation party, when they were Vice President Ned Stark and Miss Sansa Stark, she all shiny and new on her father’s arm-so Sansa slips into the crowd as quietly as possibly, Clegane following her wordlessly and dissolving into the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns. She wonders who sent him along to fetch her.
No one needs to talk to her now, nor do they particularly want to, so she walks towards the head table where she is expected to sit.
:::
“Robert’s brothers will not come to the city.” Sansa listens to Cersei, how confident she sounds in this notion, her coloring piqued from the alcohol that once inhabited the empty martini glasses in front of her. “Little shits, they are, but they’re witless. Witless cowards. Neither of them will come north of the Potomac. Just stay in their districts, bitching to reporters about their dead brother.”
“Congress isn’t in session,” Jaime comments, sitting stiffly in his dress blues. “Won’t be for another three weeks.”
“Stannis Baratheon won’t be saying what he’s saying if he had to say it to our faces,” she continues, eyes combing through the ambassadors and secretaries and White House staff milling about the room.
“He won’t have to, dear sister,” Jaime drolls, contemplating the bottom of his wine glass before draining it. “He’ll being saying it to the House floor.”
“Why aren’t you more worried?” she snaps, a blush rising high on her cheeks. The band returns from its break and the room is filled with music. Jaime shrugs, unconcerned. Cersei rolls her eyes, turning away from her twin. “And you.” Her words are now directed towards Sansa. “Where were you?”
“I felt ill, ma’am. I need to rest a bit before coming down to the party. I didn’t want to cause any trouble,” Sansa answers immediately, hands resting demurely in her lap, fingers twitching in repose.
The woman who had once spoken so kindly to her sneers in response. “We wouldn’t have that, would we? You’re too pale to begin with, you fucking Yankees.”
“I just need a good night’s rest, ma’am.” Not that she would find one. Not now, not since she was forced from their suite at the Hay-Adams, where they had stayed during her father’s brief tenure as President.
The night her father was charged with treason, the night Arya fled into the darkness, the night when she had frozen with fear, and was taken as an unspoken prisoner of war for the Lannisters. Even after President Baratheon had been assassinated in front of her, she had been able to sleep most nights.
Cersei looks her over, blue eyes pinching and prodding Sansa’s slight frame like grubby fingers, pressing dirt and blood into the fabric of her modest blue dress. “If you say so.”
Sansa’s eyes are drawn to the couples whirling across the parquet dance floor, laughing and smiling as if nothing is the matter. They are foolish, she thinks. Like children. None of this will touch them, not here in the city. People will die and lives will be ruined, but they are untouchable, here in this city where dreams are burned to cinder.
She blinks, and for moment, she is wrought by a dizzying haze, her mind reeling as she watches the rooks and pawns and bishops and knights twirl about under the golden lights. She is pawn pinned down by a Queen.
She looks at Jaime.
And a knight.
She does not know why they do not kill her. But, she figures, she is already as good as dead to them. All they have left to do is pull the trigger. For now, she is more valuable alive.
“Dance with me.” A jarring voice plunges into her thoughts, and steals her away from them. “Get up.”
“Of course, honey,” Sansa replies as easily as breathing. It is not so hard, now. The sobs no longer choke down the words. “If that is what you wish.”
Joffrey cocks an eyebrow at her.
Too much, she thinks, chastising herself. She stands, brushing the wrinkles from the folds of her skirt. Her dress is a light blue, like the summer sky, made from silk and satin, the slim bodice tapering in at her waist to meet a grosgrain belt and a flouncing skirt that falls to the middle of her calf. Similar to his mother’s gaze, Joffrey’s eyes are a weight upon her shoulders, pushing her down until she can only look at her shoes and perfectly manicured toes.
His hands clasp down on her wrist and her waist, pulling her out onto the dance floor. He leaves bruises, she thinks. Leaves bruises on everything he touches.
He dances well, and she gracefully, mutely following his learned but stiff lead.
“Look,” Joff says, turning her sharply to look over his shoulder. “Agent Swann and the moron Slynt look like they’re having it out. Dipshits, the both of them. Morons. If they were Secret Service instead of FBI I’d have them on desk duty.”
You are but the President’s grandson, Sansa thinks. You control nothing.
“Their tuxes are probably issued by the boys at the Hoover building.”
They’re in uniform. They’re still agents on duty, just like the Secret Service, she silently corrects him. The marks that are red and swollen under her meticulously-applied make up throb as he tightens his grip on her. Sansa wonders if he does it subconsciously, or if he does it because he knows he is hurting her.
Slynt turns to look towards them by accident, catches her eye, and pales.
I hate him, she thinks. He did his job but I hate him. He stood by while someone hung her father in his jail cell. Slynt brought him into custody and was supposed to stand guard outside his cell, and then shirked all responsibility for Ned Stark’s death without a care, without thinking about how the man was a father and a husband and brother and once the President of the United States. The world is better for it. Cleaner this way, he had said, while she lay on the floor of the Residence, screaming and crying.
She does not want him to think that she will drop her gaze first, instead shifting her eyes slightly, focusing them on Clegane.
He narrows his eyes, but indicates his head towards her with a subtle nod. She nods back, and gives up the illusion of engaging with Special Agent Slynt when she wriggles her fingers at the bodyguard from their position on Joff’s shoulder.
He scoffs at her, before turning his head a fraction, pressing his hand up to the receiver in his ear. Sansa smiles weakly before Joffrey steers her to look in another direction.
Clegane, at least, is predictable. Not that he scares her any less, but Sansa can usually tell what he is going to do.
And suddenly, with a shout, Slynt is on the floor, blood spurting from his nose, Special Agent Hollard looming over him, drunk and belligerent. Sansa’s mouth gapes open as the other agents on duty pull him back. She shuts her mouth quickly as Joffrey hoots in derision. She wonders if the Lord heard her vengeful thoughts.
The crowd gasps as Slynt launches himself up off the floor at Hollard, right fist swinging for the other man’s jaw. Hollard catches his fist, twists it around Slynt’s back, and pushes him through the door out into the service hallway.
Joffrey’s temper swings pendulously from amused to enraged, vibrating from anger. Sansa whimpers as his hands coil tighter around her fine bones, his short nails digging into her skin.
“Oh, fuck!” she can hear Hollard moan from beyond the door, the crowd silent.
Hollard’s wasted, she observes, wrenching her head almost painfully to observe the scene through the glass panes on the door. She turns her head slightly back to Joffrey, her blue eyes searching his blood-shot green ones, nose wrinkling at the stench of vodka on his breath. And so is he.
“Bring them to me!” Joffrey yells, indignant.
Swann disappears into the service hallway, returning to push Hollard towards Joffrey, a cruel smile pasted on his face. Secret Service agents milling around the hall pull Slynt back through the doors, and the crowd seems to pull him to the president’s older grandson.
“I should have you both arrested,” he snarls, letting Sansa go from his embrace, but not from his grasp. “Take away your badges and have you blacklisted for attacking the White House.”
“But we weren’t-”
“It was a stupid-”
“It was all my-”
“You’ll never come back here again,” Joffrey replied, now more haughty than angered. Powerful, and willing to abuse that power. And just plain drunk, and making a scene. “At a time like this, where the country is divided-how do we know that this isn’t just a distraction? My grandfather will hear about this. The whole country will hear about this, you incompetent little fucks. I’ll get you charged with treason like that headless Ned Stark, and you’ll be stuck in a jail cell the rest of your life, taking it up the ass from some black guy from the ghetto.”
“Joffrey, no, you shouldn’t-”
“I'm sorry, what did you say to me?”
He purposefully digs his nails into her sky, and Sansa bites her lip to keep from crying out. Oh sweet Lord in heaven, did she really just say that to him?
“Please,” Sansa says, mind frantically running through possible excuses like chess moves on a board. “Please, darling. Have them sent to desk duty or running errands for you, if you wish, but don’t do anything harshly tonight. You wouldn’t want people associating such a thing with your birthday party, wouldn’t you? If you make this a big deal, sweetheart, it’s all people will remember from you party. Not you, or how-how grand and how well it was planned or how jealous they should be. Besides… you want people to think of you as…as merciful. A merciful man is a good man.”
Anything to stop his drunken shouting, to stop the spectacle, to stop everyone’s eyes being drawn to her. This sort of attention has only ever caused her pain, and like a wary animal she wishes to slink away into her corner to lick her wounds.
Joffrey scowls at her, and Sansa shies away, turning head down and away, preparing for the blow. But he wouldn’t, would he? Not in front of so many people?
“She’s not lying,” Joffrey’s dog says. Sansa startles, previously unaware of his presence behind her. Joffrey is significantly less surprised. “You’d rather people remember you as kind tonight, not some drunk stupid on the finest vodka the government can buy.” His voice is flat, as if he does not care either way if Joffrey considers his opinion. Does he agree with her? Sansa watches the burned man from the corner of her eye, teeth digging into her bottom lip. Why is he agreeing with her? Why would he save her skin? He works directly for the Lannisters, he has no Secret Service badge to protect him from the Lannister’s ire.
Unhappy, Joffrey flicks his hand towards the two FBI agents. “Escort them out. I’ll talk to my grandfather about this tomorrow.”
“See?” Sansa says, words escaping her mouth in a rush. “You’re so clever. That was so politically-minded of you.”
He regards her like an owner would regard a nuisance of a pet, surprised at a sudden display of good behavior. “Perhaps you’re not as stupid as Mother said.”
:::
Cersei coos over Joffrey, smoothing his hair back into place as Jaime regards the boy with mild disdain. Sansa watches them carefully, and then smiles tightly at Myrcella as she plops down beside her, sweaty and flushed from dancing.
She’ll be a beautiful woman, one day. Sansa engages her in thoughtless conversation, dropping back into silence when Tommen joins them, and Myrcella becomes occupied with gently teasing her younger brother. If they don’t cast her down and ruin her.
Like they did to her. However, her mind does not allow her to construct the end of the sentence-she is broken, and tattered, yes, but she is no longer sorry for herself. There is not enough energy in her to be sorry for herself. Such feelings a contradictory to survival. There is no time to feel pity for herself when the Lannisters are waiting for a reason to dispose of her in one way or another.
Stannis Baratheon should be president.
She’s studied the 25th Amendment in school. She is-was, she corrects herself, for Cersei has already told her that she would not be returning for the Spring semester-a political science major. She used to carry a copy of the constitution in her pocket.
(The small moleskin book had been a high school graduation present from Momma.)
Like so many times before, Sansa takes the cold, objectified memory from its shelf in her brain, dusts it off, and replays it like she had simply been yet another American citizen watching the whole thing play out on CNN.
Jon Arryn dies from a heart attack. Aunt Lysa and Robin flee the district to their home outside Fort Bragg. President Baratheon asks Daddy to be his Vice President. Daddy accepts. Daddy, Arya and I go South to live at Number One Observatory Circle with him. Daddy finds something out about the Lannisters. President Baratheon is murdered on the streets outside the Capital Building. Daddy becomes President. Tywin Lannister is nominated as President, and is confirmed by the House, but not the Senate. Daddy is arrested for treason. Arya disappears.
Tywin Lannister claims the Oval Office. So does Speaker of the House Stannis Baratheon. But congress has already ended session. Tywin Lannister moves into the White House. I am taken with them. Joffrey is named a Special Advisor to the President. I am raped. Father dies. Stannis declares Tywin Lannister’s presidency unconstitutional.
Robb and Mother try and find Arya. Negotiate with the Lannisters for my release. Maine mobilizes its National Guard. Jon goes missing on his mission trip in Siberia.
And the new additions:
Renly Baratheon, former Secretary of Defense, unites the Southern states against Tywin Lannister, but does not support his brother. Calls for a new election. Texas declares independence. Michigan allies with Canada and declares independence. Twenty six states mobilize their National Gaurds. Mother flies South to meet with Governor Baratheon.
I am beaten. I shower. I get ready for the party. Tywin Lannister is called to the Situation Room. His cabinet is still loyal to him. Sandor Clegane takes me down to the party.
And the video stops in her mind, the vision frizzing and devolving into something like static. Like white noise. It does not hurt if she does not allow it to hurt. It is what has happened, and she must live with it.
She went to the White House doctor last month to get the birth control pill.
Joffrey gave her syphilis. She is on an anti-viral. She hasn’t told him that he has it. Perhaps he will go mad.
Sansa is unable to contain a sudden burst of giggles.
Cersei looks at her with a look of disgust flaring over her face, looking at Sansa as if she a bug to be squashed or perhaps a butterfly already pinned to a display board. Pretty, but dead.
“What’s so funny?”
Sansa pales, and casts her eyes to her hands, folded as ever in her lap, hiding amongst the shimmering flounces of her dress. “Nothing, ma’am.”
“That’s right,” Cersei responds coolly. “Nothing is funny. Not when your traitor brother and whore-mother are conspiring against the American government.”
Like you aren’t? Sansa wants to say. There is an important distinction that Cersei is forgetting: there is the president, and there is the office of the presidency. One can be loyal to one and betray the other. And Robb has not conspired against the American government.
Sansa nods, not quite looking the first lady in the eyes, instead fixing her gaze on her shapely blonde eyebrows.
The first lady turns, and looking past her son, addresses her twin. “Father has been gone quite a while. Is he still in the Situation Room? We should go down there.”
“You don’t have Situation Room access,” Jaime answers.
Cersei stares at him. “But you do, Commander.”
“Oh right,” he says, smirking. Jaime rises from his seat, holding out his hand for his sister. As she passes, Cersei grips Sansa’s bare shoulder and uses her long nails to slice into her skin. Sansa does not so much as wince, but blinks, wondering vaguely how this has become normal for her.
Would she ever be able to undo what the Lannisters have done to her-find her way back to normal? Or something resembling normalcy?
She mulls it over in her head.
It is only if she survives, and she cannot dare to hope for that just yet. She is certain that the Lannisters were behind Daddy’s death, and the coroner had ruled that a suicide. No one would be surprised if she were to kill herself as well.
“Sir.” Clegane’s voice pierces his thoughts, his rough voice bringing her out into the world where all the others fade into the static that supports her brain’s wanderings. “Your uncle Tyrion has returned from Boston.”
Tyrion Lannister passes the head table, inclining his head to his nephew. “Happy Birthday, Joffrey.”
“You,” Joffrey replies over the rim of his champagne flute.
“Me,” Tyrion agrees “although a more courteous greeting might be in order, for an uncle and an elder.”
“They said you weren’t coming back,” Clegane says, the scarred man’s cool slate eyes raking over the man who had been given the moniker ‘the dwarf of Dallas.’
The little man gives the hulking, brutish-looking Clegane a look, a cruel smile twisting at his mouth. Sansa briefly thinks that the two are well-matched in grotesque smiles. “I was speaking to my nephew, not his cur.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Myrcella says with a sparkling smile. Sansa remembers what it was like to smile at someone like that. To take joy just from someone’s presence. She wants to reach over and take the girl’s hand in hers, and pray that her mother does not rob her of her innocence and gentle demeanor.
“We share that view, dear child.” Tyrion turns to Sansa. “Miss Stark, I am so very sorry for your loss.”
Sansa cannot think of a word to say back to him, so unused to using her mouth to do anything but fend off Lannister cruelties with demure phrases. How could he be sorry for her? Was he mocking her?
“I’m sorry that my mother and brother… detained you for so long, Mr. Lannister,” she answers finally. Momma had always told her that courtesy was a Southern lady’s armor. Her daughter had been born and raised in New England, but now she was amongst Texan nobility. She will don her armor for however long it will serve her.
“A great many people are sorry for that,” he replies, grinning. “And before I am done, some may be a great deal sorrier… yet I thank you for the sentiment. Joffrey, where might I find your mother? And grandfather?”
“She and Uncle Jaime went to the Situation Room. Grandfather has been down there for hours.” Joffrey gives Sansa an angry look, as if it is her fault that they are there. “The southern states are marching north and Stannis is calling himself president of the United States.”
The dwarf smiles crookedly. “All sorts of people are calling themselves presidents these days.”
Joff, intoxicated as he is, does not know what to make of that statement, but looks at his uncle with an expression steeped in suspicion. “Yes. Well. I’m glad you’re here, uncle. Did you buy me a birthday gift?”
“I brought my wits.”
“I’d sooner have Robb Stark’s head. Or at least his fucking mouth sewn shut,” he spits, flicking the words out irately like he could not be rid of them any quicker. Sansa does not wince as perhaps he expects her to at his words. She watches his face, and finds a rueful truth, and a confirmation of her suspicions. Not suicide. Her eyes then drift to Clegane’s-his face is passive, but his eyes meet hers for but a moment
before she breaks away, focusing on Joffrey’s tirade again, only to find it over. “Tommen, Myrcella, come. We need to talk to people in mother’s absence.”
Sandor Clegane lingers behind for a moment, eyes raking over Sansa’s frame, pausing on where she knows Joffrey drew blood at her wrist. He turns to Tyrion, and with a small ounce of dark humor, says, “I’d watch that tongue of yours, dwarf, before the little prince decides to get someone to cut it out.”
Sansa tries to square herself against Tyrion’s gaze. His eyes soften on her. “Is it your grief for your father that makes you look so sad?”
“My father was a traitor,” she says at once. “And my brother and mother are traitors as well. I love my fiancé.”
You love me, Joffrey had hissed over and over as his fist connected with her stomach earlier this afternoon when she was forced to go before the first family in the East Sitting Hall. Your father was a fucking liar, and now your brother’s gonna die. And you better fucking love me bitch, or I’ll slit your throat myself.
“No doubt.” Tyrion’s words draw her back out. “As loyal as a deer surrounded by wolves.”
“Lions,” she whispers without thinking, envisioning the crest on the ring on Tywin Lannister’s hand. She glances about nervously. It is one thing to converse as such in her head, but when speaking them aloud could earn her a repeat experience of that afternoon…
Lannister reaches over the table to her and takes her hand, squeezing it between his stubby fingers. “I am only a little lion, miss, and I vow, I shall not savage you.” Mimicking a bow, he says to her, “Now, if you excuse me, I must find my father. I have urgent business with him.”
Sansa watches him walk out, disappearing and reappearing in the crowd of normal-sized people, before leaving through the wide East Room doors and into the state floor foyer. Finally allowing her eyes to be drawn to the crescent-shaped marks on her wrists and the finger-shaped bruises she knows are forming on her shoulders, she looks nervously about the filled ballroom, and spots Joffrey amongst a gaggle of diplomats.
Breathing purposely through her nose, Sansa pushes herself up from her seat. Once she had loved Joffrey, or thought she had loved him. She had admired his mother and trusted her. And they had both betrayed her family. She could not trust Tyrion Lannister. She could no longer trust pretty words. Steeling her spine, she strides calmly out of the room, whisking around the corner of the foyer and opening one of the hidden doors to the servants’ staircase to the second floor.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she plops down on the second stair. The narrow staircase is plain, the walls a simple light wood with white trimmings. It reminds her of home.
Feeling the tension leave her frame, Sansa reaches down to unclasp the buckle of her strappy high-heeled shoes and pushes them off her tired feet before massaging her twisted ankle.
The sudden jolt of pain sends the memory of Joffrey dragging her down the stairs by her hair back into her mind. It grips her and shakes her like a doll and leaves no air to breathe in the tiny compartment. Massaging her temples, Sansa closes her eyes and breathes as slowly as possible, forcing the memory back onto its shelf.
Pushing back the world, she sits, and she breathes.
:::
“The fuck are you doing back here?” Sandor Clegane growls, stomping down the stairs. He halts a few steps above her, his large body casting a dark shadow on the pine-covered walls. “Girl!”
Sansa pushes herself against the side of the wall. “You can get through.”
“The White House is on lockdown, so no, I can’t get through. I have to sweep the staircases, and lock them down.” He sounds irritated.
Sansa raises her head in surprise. “We’re on lockdown?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” he snaps, making no move to get past her.
“Yes,” she whispers, looking down again, toeing her shoes where they lay, moving them the slightest bit just to do something, anything. “So why aren’t you with Joffrey?”
“Because the brat started getting sick all over himself so I had to drag him upstairs and toss him into bed.” He snorts. “The little prince didn’t want me standing by as he puked his guts out, so he sent me away.”
A weight on her shoulders is relieved, but Sansa keeps her relief strictly internal. If he fell asleep early, he wouldn’t come to her room during the night. “So why are we on lockdown, sir?”
Clegane shrugs, leaning against the wall in the narrow passage. “Probably some GW frat boys trying to climb the South Gate.”
Sansa nods and tries to give him a small smile, instinctively covering the fresh bruises and bloodied nail-marks on her right wrist with her left hand. “Probably.”
He narrows his eyes at her. “And don’t call me sir.”
She coughs. “What should I call you, then? Mr. Clegane?”
He snorts, and then shrugs before folding his arms under his chest and indicating at her wrist with his hand. “You should clean those, when you can. His hand was up the French Ambassador’s daughter’s skirt earlier tonight. The ones on your shoulders, too.”
Sansa’s hand tightens around her wrist. The marks are obvious and yet here, in the White House of all places, no one would help her. Say something. Do something. Do anything.
She tries to think of a response, but is not required to when Clegane’s hand flies to his good ear, pressing on the receiver. His face hardens, and then becomes unreadable.
“What?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper. “What is it?”
He laughs then, low and rasping and more jaded and bitter than amused. “Renly Baratheon is leading the National Guards from Virginia and West Virginia into the city. He’s broadcasting on an unscrambled channel-says more are coming.”
“Renly Baratheon is invading the city?”
“Yes little bird,” he says slowly, his booted foot dropping heavily onto a lower step. She peers up at him, and something barely perceptible shifts in his face when he notices there are tears threatening to over flow in her eyes. “What? No, girl, the White House is the fucking most defensible building in the country, outside of the treasury building and the Pentagon.”
“No,” she says, wiping at the tears escaping from her lashes. Carefully, she has learned how to do so without making her eyes swell or to ruin her makeup; she uses the tips of her fingernails to collect the moisture so they do not leave behind a trace. “I’m relieved it isn’t an army from the north.”
Clegane snorts. “Do you know how long it would take your brother to move men down here?”
She tries to laugh. It is in awkward sound-disused, abandoned. “No. I don’t.”
“A really fucking long time.” He is silent for a moment, before the muscles on the unburned side of his face tighten and release suddenly. “No, little bird, you shouldn’t have to worry about the Lannisters tonight.”
“Worry about them killing me, anyway.” Her voice is barely audible. “Anything else is still fair game.”
He nods jerkily, unable to meet her eyes. He straightens again suddenly, a new bulletin coming through the earpiece. Lifting his right cuff to his mouth, her murmurs something that only reaches Sansa’s ears as a jumble of syllables. He looks back to her with piercing eyes. “Get upstairs, girl.”
“What?” She slowly begins to reach for her shoes.
Clegane growls, dragging her upright, her shoes just out of reach of her fingers. He pushes her up the stairs. “Get upstairs. Get upstairs, and go to your pretty little cage. And block the door.”
Slowly climbing the steps backwards, Sansa feels the tension begin to ascend her spine again, the hairs on her neck and arms rising. “Why?”
Then she hears it: Joffrey’s angry yell, followed by his mother’s piercing shriek, from the floor below.
“Run,” he snaps. “Run, and block the door.”
Don’t fight him, he had told her. Do as he tells you, girl. It’ll hurt less. Sandor Clegane had never outright protected her, but he had never hurt her, either. And he treated her like a human being, not a captive. He must think the Lannisters’ rage to be truly formidable to advise her to go anything but the route of least resistance.
“Go,” he hisses, urging her on with his large hands on her shoulders. “If you can, get your dresser up against the door. Fucking White House, no locks on the doors.”
Feeling the blood rush from her face, Sansa flees up the staircase and onto the second floor. Behind her, she can hear Sandor go back downstairs, and slam the door behind him.
:::
Sansa does not sleep that night.
She lies on top of the fine duvet covering the four-poster bed, as still as the night that weighs on her like a heavy cloak, listening to sirens and the sound of gunfire pollute the city soundscape. Eyes wide open, the shadows dance across the ceiling, the bright security lights from the White House lawn spilling into her bedroom through gauzy white curtains.
Her dresser is pushed in front of the door. And a heavy leather-backed chair, for good measure.
She does not flinch when Joffrey starts pounding on her door, nor when he continues for the better part of an hour. She does not flinch. She does not flinch.
She will not flinch. She will not move. She will not cry.
You fucking slut, you’d better open this door if you know what’s good for you. Cunt, open the door. Cunt, if you don’t open this door I am going to wrap my hands around your throat and squeeze until you neck snaps.
You fucking cunt, I’m going to do it anyway, how dare you deny me.
She is a pawn on the wrong side of the board.
And every piece is advancing.
:::
( Part One: City of Cinder)( Part Two:City of Ash)( Part Three: City of Blood)( Epilogue: The Northern Town)
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