City of Cinder, City of Ash (3/3)
Part Three: City of Blood
Rating: MA
Warnings: Graphic non-con, graphic violence, mental instability. Trigger warnings for attempted rape.
Pairing: SanSan
Word Count: 7,302
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. Epilogue to come.
In order to become a Queen, a pawn must distract the other side for long enough to cross the board unnoticed. Or rather, move when a distraction is provided.
The night sky fills with fire, and Sansa knows that her moment has come.
:::
But hours earlier, she is sitting on her bench in the Rose Garden, the one that she has not shared with Sandor Clegane for over a week. She has not shared anything with Sandor Clegane this week. Not a glance, not a word. Not even silence.
(She still has his suit jacket. He has not asked for it back. She is not sure if she would give it, if he did.)
(Why, she doesn’t know. Nor does she really have the energy to search inside herself to figure out why.)
Not yet, Agent Hollard had told her. Not yet, we will know the moment when it comes.
When? she had asked. And he had smiled politely and answered her vaguely, yet again, and excused himself to his duties. Sansa knows that she is putting her faith in the wrong person, but the drunk, incapable Hollard is the only one who seems to be willing to offer help. And Sansa knows that the White House is so well-guarded these days that she will not be able to make her escape without help from someone on the inside.
She misses the snow. It must be snowing back in Maine. Her breath coils tightly in her lungs when it hits her, again and again like bullets being fired repeatedly from a gun, that her home is gone. She has nothing to go back to-
But her memories sit in her mind like a snow-globe. Perfect and pristine, her childhood home is both true and intangible, false and alive inside this world in miniature. She inverts the memory in her mind, until it curves in the shape of a lie, and snow falls softly over the home of childhood, protected and unreachable. All that Sansa has ever known is gone.
It doesn’t snow here.
And to think, she used to complain about the cold.
Give me a kiss, he told her, leaning in. Sansa had closed her eyes and lightly pressed her lips to his fleshy, stubbled cheek, avidly avoiding his wet, searching lips. She did not have to take that, not anymore, not after Tyrion Lannister put the lock on the door and agents in the hallway, barring Joffrey and the rest entrance.
A burst of frustration ripples under her skin, pushing Sansa to her feet. Blood swirls through her brain, her vision quickly closing to pin points, some unstoppable force pulling her back down onto the bench. Some large hand shoots out of the darkness, steadying her and preventing her from sliding down off the slick bench and onto the muddied ground.
“Let go of me,” she cries, batting away the hand as the miasma clouding her vision begins to dissipate, the heaviness in her head subside. “Let go!”
“The little bird was falling,” a male voice-which she immediately recognizes-chastises her, pulling her torso up into a straight line, picking her up off the bench for a slim second before dropping her back onto it. Sansa slumps against the back, closing her eyes. “Unless you wanted to hit your head against iron.”
“I wasn’t going to fall, I was-”
“Come off it, girl,” he rasps, looming over her.
She takes a deep breath, forcing away the spots in her vision. “You startled me, that’s all.” Looking up suddenly becomes painful, a sharp pain pulling behind her eyes. “I thought I was alone.” She looks down.
“The little bird still can’t bear to look, can she?” She hears him move, and then the bench shifts slightly beneath her, and she can feel his warmth beside her. She can’t read him well enough to tell if he’s angry or disappointed in her. She braces herself for his rage-which she remembers. She knows his rage, just as well as she knows Joffrey’s. She watched him shoot the arm off of the man at the gate. She has borne the brunt of it as well, in her early days in DC before she learned how not to provoke Joffrey’s ill-tempered bodyguard.
“I should have thanked you,” she says, haltingly, instead of that is unfair, I was a child then. “When you told them to stop. And the night you told me to bar the door. Thank you, that was very brave.”
Her voice is dulled. She does not need this from him; she should not accept it from anyone. But she is not in a position to fight back. He could harm her, she thinks. But he would not. But courtesy is her armor. She will arm herself with false platitudes and a flat voice. He cannot hurt her. No one can hurt her.
“Brave?” He gives her a harsh laugh. “Don’t thank a dog for chasing off rats, girl.”
I’m not a girl. And you are not a dog.
“Still, thank you for giving me your jacket.” She does not tell him she will never forgive him for not helping her. For going along with the Lannisters’ whims. The country is at war-there are sides that would gladly give him shelter at her word. “I must return it to you, sir.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him glaring at her, and angry smile twisting his lips. “Doesn’t mean a fucking thing. You keep it.”
She smiles then, a small and ugly thing. Sansa hates the way he speaks, always so angry and hateful when he is not being Joffrey’s dutiful guard. “Does it give you joy to be an ass to everyone?”
“Yes, little bird.” He takes too much happiness from being cruel to others, she muses, watching him. She watches him, just like how she watches all of them.
“Please do not call me that,” she says. Her voice is calm. She is calm. She is a lady, and she deserves to be respected. She is Sansa Stark, and she deserves kindness. She is a human being. “I am your employer’s fiancé. You will address me as either miss or Miss Stark.”
Clegane says nothing in return, and Sansa moves to stand before invoking his anger.
“Do you think I’m here to save you?” he asks, voice turning harsh. Angry. She has provoked him, she knows. It does not surprise her. The world’s cruelties no longer hold any surprise for her. “That I’m some American hero like your daddy? That I’m some honorable soldier, looking out for the weak and the poor? You think your daddy was like that too-he was a soldier, girl. Soldiers kill. We’re not in it for honor or patriotism or the rest of that bullshit.”
“It was his duty,” she seethes, fingernails biting into the raw skin of her palms. The blood begins to pound in her head again and she turns to look at him, not letting her eyes drop from his face. His eyes glitter strangely in the damp light, almost excited beyond his usual mask of disgusted apathy. “He didn’t enjoy what he did. But he fought for God and country.”
“Is that what he told you?” he laughs. It is tinged with cruelty. She wants to leave, knows she can leave, but chooses to stay. “Your father lied. Killing is the sweetest thing there is.” He draws his gun from its holster, turning it dispassionately in his hands. His eyes reveal nothing, she sees. He feels nothing. Perhaps only anger, and hatred. And perhaps only that because he does not know how to feel anything.
Sansa remembers the military gala Joffrey took her to in her first month in the capital, where Sandor ran into his brother. She watched Captain Gregor Clegane with his poor, shaking, silent wife. She heard the story from Sandor’s drunken lips. Of how Gregor pushed his face into the fireplace in the dead of winter, of the father who covered it up, of the Lannisters who bought and paid for Gregor’s career and power and then Sandor’s.
They call him dog, she thinks. He does not remember how to be a man.
Sansa feels her anger dissipate. She hugs herself, cold again. “Why are you always so hateful? I was thanking you…”
There are other gardens. You do not have to take your break here.
"Just as if I was one of those good old American boys you love so well, yes. What do you think a soldier is for, girl? You think it's all taking kisses from ladies and looking fine in uniform? Soldiers, agents, the police are for killing." He doesn’t move his body, but raises his arm high enough that the barrel of his gun is level with her forehead. Sansa can feel the coldness of the steel, even from half a foot away.
"I killed my first man at eighteen. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then. Men in their homes, civilians and soldiers, you can’t tell over there-women and children too-they're all meat, and I'm the butcher. Let them have their land and their gods and their gold. Let them have their officers and ribbons and medals." Sandor Clegane spits at her feet to show what he thinks of that. "So long as I have this," he said, dropping the gun from her head, "there's no man on earth I need fear."
Except your brother, Sansa thinks, but has better sense than to say it aloud. He is a dog, just as he says. A half-wild, mean-tempered dog that bites any hand that tries to pet him, and yet will savage any man who tries to hurt his masters. "Not even the men across the river?"
Clegane's eyes turn toward the distant fires. "All this burning." He holsters his gun. "Only cowards fight with fire."
"Stannis Baratheon is no coward-”
“He's not the man his brother was either. President Baratheon never let a little thing like a river stop him."
"What will you do when he crosses?"
"Fight. Kill. Die, maybe."
"Aren't you afraid? That God might send you down to some terrible hell for all the evil you've done."
"What evil?" He laughs "What God?"
"The Lord who made us all."
"All?" he mocks. "Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Dwarf, or a halfwit like Secretary
Stokeworth's daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with."
"Soldiers protect the weak."
He snorts. "There are no glorious soldiers, no brave policemen, no more than there is a God. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Good guns and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different."
Sansa backs away from him, feeling something like despair tightening in her gut. This was the man who pushed her up the steps to hide from Joffrey, who told them to stop, who covered her up and carried her to bed and kissed her. He is man, and he is hurting, she tells herself fiercely. He is like me. We do not handle it the same way, but we are both hurting. We are more alike than we are different. "You're awful."
"I'm honest. It's the world that's awful. Now fly away, little bird, I'm sick of you chirping at me." He smiles at her, a bemused and ugly thing.
Sansa steels herself, and leaves, unwilling to remain in his company after his abject dismissal, but similarly unwilling to return to the Residence, Cersei’s domain. She figures she will circle the grounds until she must go inside for dinner. Wrapping her arms tighter around herself, she sets off on her walk.
There is a God. There are brave soldiers. There are good men. Whether or not Sandor Clegane is one, however, she thinks, remains to be seen. Not all the stories are lies.
:::
“Miss Stark.” Secretary Peter Baelish sweeps out from the alcove opening out onto the south lawns, offering Sansa his arm. “My condolences, sweetheart. Your mother was a close friend from my childhood. I cannot imagine the magnitude of your loss.”
Sansa reluctantly takes his arm, careful to keep a layer of cool air between their bodies.
Peter Baelish is no hero-he is the Secretary of the Treasury. He controls the purse strings, and the Secret Service. And the Secret Service’s purse strings. I must not trust him. I must not trust anyone.
(She errantly brushes away the thought of Sandor Clegane that steals through her mind.)
Nevertheless, she allows Secretary Baelish lead her around the lawn, nodding at his idle chatter, watching the people they pass, carefully picking out which agents Baelish had bought and filing away the information for future use.
After all, war will come to their doorsteps at any moment. She must prepare herself in every way possible.
:::
They have been singing in the East Room all since dusk, since the first report of enemy fire had reached the White House. The sound of their voices mingled with the squeal of tires, the sharp report of gunfire, and the groaning hinges of the great iron gates to make a strange and fearful music. In the rows of seats they sing for Mother Mary’s mercy but their knees it's the Father they pray to, and all in silence. She remembers how Sister Mary Mordane used to tell them that the father and the Holy Spirit were only two faces of the same great god, and that the saints could do the Lord’s work and help answer prayers. All were faces and facets of the same great God.
But if there is only one God, whose prayers will be heard?
Agent Trant holds the door to the sleek, black armored car open for Joffrey to enter. Sansa thinks he has never looked more like a boy, clad in an uniform he is not fit to wear. Like a little boy dressing up for Halloween, she thinks. The uniform is fit for men like her father and Robert Baratheon and the Hound. Not for Joffrey.
The pale sunlight glints off the golds and reds and vibrant blues and clean whites decorating his ROTC cadet uniform every time he moves. Bright, shining, and empty, Sansa thinks, recalling every story behind every one of her father’s medals and ribbons.
His uncle, Tyrion, is waiting beside him in the White House drive, dressed more plainly than the little prince in battle gear that made him look like a little boy dressed up in his father's clothes. But there was nothing childish about the glock that the Dwarf of Dallas had strapped to his thigh. Agent Moore prepares to ride at his side, police motorcycle dinged and stained with soot and blood.
When Tyrion sees her he stops checking his weapon, and turns to her.
"Miss Sansa," he calls to her. "Surely my sister has asked you to join the other civilians in the Residence?”
"She has, sir, but my love Joffrey sent for me to see him off. I mean to visit with the White House chaplain as well, to pray."
"I won't ask for whom." His mouth twists oddly; a mockery of a smile. Sansa shapes her mouth similarly, biting back her ire. Why must he bait her so, in front of Joffrey? There will be a time when his ability to protect her is gone. Is he so arrogant to assume that he can “protect” her at every turn?
She watches the rest of the men climb into the car, and the agents mount their motorcycles. She waves until they are beyond the gates and are out of sight.
Through the quiet, the singing pulls at her. Sansa turned toward the doors to the ground floor of the Residence, to the foyer that leads to the East Room. Two grounds workers follow, and one of the agents whose watch was ended. Others fall in behind them.
:::
Sansa has never seen the floor so crowded, nor so brightly lit, not even for Joffrey’s birthday gala; great shafts of light-the security lights, yes, she knows-cast through the windows, twinkling specs of lint dancing inside of them. The altar to Mary and the saints and the candles of the lost are swamped with people-people standing, people on their knees, people on top of people and all the candles alight, voices and eyes raising to God.
There are so many people, she thinks. So many, fighting so many against many against many. Who will be left to judge us but God?
She thinks of the last CNN broadcast into the city before the cables were brought down the night before. They paint her as the traitor to her family, now that Robb is no longer alive to speak for her. They do not understand why she cannot leave. Why she does not confront them. Why she simply folds into herself and waits.
She no longer exists within these walls. Nor out of them. Nothing remains of her except her bones. She is Sansa Stark, and she has nothing else. But she wants to live. So that is what she will fight for.
Sansa visits each of the altars in turn, lighting a candle at each altar. She then goes before the chaplain and kneels, receiving communion, the wine heavy on her lips and the wafer bitter on her tongue, and then finds herself a place in the rows of folding chairs between a wizened old cleaning woman and a boy no older than Ricky, dressed in the fine oxford shirt and navy vest of Sidwell Friends School. The old woman's hand is bony and hard with callus, the boy's small and soft, but it is good to have someone to hold on to. The air is hot and heavy, smelling of incense and sweat and unwashed bodies-the water turned off this morning, another omen that Sansa knows, that the end of the Lannisters’ reign is coming-it makes her dizzy to breathe it.
She knows the hymn; her mother had taught it to her once, a long time ago in Winterfell. She joins her voice with theirs.
Áve María, grátia pléna, Dóminus técum. Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Iésus.
From across the city, thousands had jammed into the National Cathedral and other churches for asylum, and they would be singing too, their voices swelling out over the city, across the river, and up into the sky. Surely God must hear us. He will know we have no part in this war. We want peace. We want it to end.
But God doesn’t always protect the innocent.
Mother, Father, Robb, Bran, Ricky-the dead. Jon, Arya-the missing.
Sáncta María, Máter Déi, óra pro nóbis peccatóribus, nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae. Ámen.
Sansa knows most of the hymns, and followed along on those she did not know as best she could. She sings along with grizzled old garbage men and anxious young wives, with waitresses and assistants, cooks and interns, bus drivers and the cleaning staff, students and valets and nursing mothers. She sings with those inside the high fence around the White House yard and those without, sings with all the city. She sings for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Ricky and Robb, for her sister Arya and Jon, away, missing but maybe still safe somewhere, hiding and alone. She sings for her mother and her father, for her grandfather Hoster and her uncle Edmund Tully, for her friend from Georgetown Jeyne Poole, for old drunken President Robert Baratheon, for Sister Mary Mordane and Agent Hollard and Jory Cassel, father’s aide, and Luwin, her father’s old Chief of Staff. For all the brave soldiers and policemen and women who will die today, and for the children and the wives who will mourn them, and finally, toward the end, she even sang for Tyrion the Dwarf and for the Hound.
He is no hero but he saved me all the same, she prays to the Lord, fingers clasped tightly and eyes squeezed shut. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him. Heal his hurts. Lead him onto the path to righteousness. In Jesus’s name I pray, amen.
But when the priest climbs on the steps brought in leading up to the altar and calls upon the gods to protect and defend their president, Tywin Lannister and his family, Sansa gets to her feet. Let his guns break and his tanks break and his ranks break, Sansa thinks coldly as she shoves out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him.
A few agents pace along the doors, but otherwise the White House seems empty outside of the East Room. Sansa stops and listens. Away off, she can hear the sounds of battle. The singing almost drowns them out, but the sounds are there if you have ears to hear: the moaning sirens, the cacophony of gunfire, the shouts of officers and the flashbangs of bombs and the rumble of breaking pavement, the clatter of falling houses and blasted brick-and below it all, the sound of death.
Why? Sansa thinks. Why? Why would you kill for power and kill to keep it. It is not yours, Tywin Lannister. This country is not yours. Neither are its people.
This country is not yours, Stannis. Not yours. Not anyones.
If I was ever president, I would make them love me.
She stands in the foyer, breathing. Just breathing. It comes to her one second at a time, now. It is all she can live for.
Perhaps if she finds a way out she can surrender to Stannis’s men. Maybe they will not kill her on sight. She must find Agent Hollard, she knows. This is the moment. But his face has been absent from the crowds, and she worries that he has been sent to fight and die. One thing she knows for certain is that if she escapes and fails, the Lannisters will not hesitate to kill her. With Robb dead and the northern states left with no one to rally around, she no longer has any value to them. Surely Stannis Baratheon has no interest in her.
(Sometimes she wonders why she is still alive.)
The two guards at the door wear the uniform of the Secret Service but Sansa knows they are only guns for hire dressed up in suits. Another sits at the foot of the stair-a real agent would be standing, not sitting on a step with his rifle across his knees, but he rises when he sees her.
Sansa freezes, the sight of Agent Payne, the man who was at her father’s cell the night of his death stands against one of the large windows overlooking the portico.
The hidden door to the staircase opens, and the first lady steps through it.
Cersei's suit is snowy linen, white as snow. Her tailored sleeves show a lining of gold satin. Masses of bright yellow hair tumble to her shoulders in thick curls. Around her slender neck hangs a strand of pearls. All the white makes her look strangely innocent, almost maidenly, but there are points of color high on her cheeks, betraying her agitation.
She pauses, looking at the auburn-haired girl. "You look pale, Sansa," Cersei observes. "Still not well?"
“Yes."
"How apt." The first lady appraises her with cold eyes. They are hungry, but detached. Like a predator observing its prey when the game has grown boring, when victory is assured and all that is left is the kill.
"Why is Agent Payne here?" Sansa blurts out.
The first lady glances at the mute agent. "To deal with treason, and to defend us if need be. He was a corrections officer before he was in the secret service." She points her index finger toward the end of the hall, where the tall wooden doors had been closed and barred. "When the axes smash down those doors, you may be glad of him."
I would be gladder if it were the Hound, Sansa thinks. Harsh as he was, she does not believe Sandor Clegane would let any harm come to her. "Won't your guards protect us?"
No, of course not, she thinks bitterly before Cersei can even answer.
"And who will protect us from my guards?" The queen gives the hired guns a sideways look. "Loyal bodyguards are rare as virgin whores. If the battle is lost my guards will trip over themselves to switch sides. They'll steal what they can and flee, along with the servers, cleaning women, and valet boys, all out to save their own worthless hides. Do you have any notion what happens when a city is sacked, Sansa? No, you wouldn't, would you? All you know of life you learned from fairytales, and there's such a dearth of good sacking stories."
"True men would never harm women and children." The words ring hollow in her ears even as she says them.
"True men." The first lady seems to find that wonderfully amusing. "No doubt you're right. So why don't you just go pray with the others like a good girl, and wait for a white knight to come and save you. I’d recommend you get yourself a knife. Make sure it’s sharp. It’ll be better to slit your own throat than to live through what they’ll do to a pretty young thing like you. Die on your own terms.”
:::
They have passed the gates.
They tore down the gates. The White House is without power and Stannis Baratheon’s men have torn down the gates. I must get out I must leave now.
Oh God.
Oh God oh God oh God, Lord please have mercy.
Where is Hollard. He is gone. He’s left me. I shouldn’t have trusted him oh God he’s gone and left me-
She screams.
Agent Hollard is still in the White House. Sansa screams, throwing herself backwards, throwing herself off balance and hits the floor with the loud sound, muffled only a bit by the plush carpet.
“Oh God,” she screams, crab-crawling back, away from Agent Hollard’s body, which is stuffed into the curtains. He is bloodlessly pale in the moonlight, and Sansa scrambles to her feet, edging to the other side of the hallway before breaking out into a run to the staircase, sprinting up to the second floor.
No one there is no one no one I will save myself.
:::
She slams her door shut behind her, whirling around to get to the far side of her dresser to barricade it shut. Adrenaline pumps through her veins, cold sweet sticky against her clothes, pulling at the thin cotton of her blouse and the satin lining of her grey skirt. Cold. She is hot and cold and her head is spinning and she is going to pass out and soon.
She had tried to calm them downstairs, she had. After Cersei had fled and Lance had come in, bleeding she had tried but there was no hope. Only a sort of restless hysteria, which had given way to chaos when the lights went out and the generators were cut.
“Miss Stark.”
She screams, clapping her hand over her mouth.
He steps out of the shadows, reaching a hand out to her. “Calm down, Sansa. It’s going to be okay, I have a way out. I can take you with me, to your Aunt Lysa.”
“Secretary-Secretary Baelish,” she breathes, but does not reach for him. Instead, she backs away. He is the reason that Cersei will not allow the Secret Service near her or her son. She cannot trust this man. She can trust no one. Not anymore. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Agent Hollard is dead, Miss Stark.”
“O-okay,” she answers, her back hitting the edge of her dresser. He advances towards her, and Sansa’s eyes fill with light, even in the pervading darkness. She has never noticed how dark the night can get. The fighting must have knocked out the city’s power. “I know that. I-I saw him.” She finds her voice and steadies it. “Why does it matter?”
“He was helping me, sweetheart. He was going to help me take you out of the city.”
Sansa feels a shiver ring through her, feels the adrenaline ring through her, feels her pulse pumping in her ears. She rings like a bell. Her fingers itch to move, so do her feet. Do not stop moving, a voice whispers in her ear. She does not, easing her weight back and forth between her feet.
“You?” she asks. “Agent Hollard was your man?”
“Yes, dear,” Baelish answers. I come from a small stretch on the peninsula called the fingers. Very small. It’s really a clever nickname. Sansa wonders why she had trusted so many people. “We have to leave now, though.”
“Okay,” Sansa says, holding the syllables in her mouth like she is afraid to let them go. “And you will take me to my aunt?” she asks tentatively.
“Yes,” Littlefinger replies, smiling. “I will take you to Lysa.”
“Why?”
His smile grows wider, and he reaches out for her again. “Your mother was such a good friend of mine.”
She does not reach out to him, her body crying for her to run. Take flight, it says. Take flight.
And something in the room breaks, and Peter Baelish, for as slight of a man as he is, lunges for her. Sansa does not scream, she does not have time to. She launches herself off the dresses towards the door to her bathroom, something in her blood giving her grace and speed. She crashes onto the tiled floor, feet slipping out from under her as she turns, slowly, she thinks she is moving slowly-everything is moving slowly, and she tries to slam the door shut, she does-
But Littlefinger’s foot is there and the door bounces back open and his hands are reaching for her and she shrieks, batting them away.
“Let me help you!” he shouts, hands closing in around her waist. “I’ll help you!”
No he won’t, her blood sings. She screams, bites at his hand when it covers her mouth, screams again when his arms wrap around her waist. He drags her back out into her bedroom, and she screams and kicks and fights, holding onto her door and she feels her nails breaking as she holds on and he tears her away from it, throws her down onto the bed.
“Let me help you,” he says.
Not again, Sansa thinks. She whines, pushing back at him, hands flailing as he tries to grab her wrists and pin her down. No, not again.
Baelish takes her wrists and wrenches them above her head, and Sansa hisses as she feels her shoulder pop out of place, her arm twisting at an unnatural angle. Her back arches up off the bed as her mouth opens, and snaps, trying to grab the skin of his neck between her teeth. He just smiles down at her, calm.
“No,” she says. “No, get off of me. Go. No. No, please. Please, just go.”
Fight, a voice tells her. Fight, darling, you have to fight.
“Please. Please no. Please just stop. Please, please sir, please.”
She kicks her legs uselessly, bucking up against him. A crash sounds from below, and he is distracted. Sansa brings her head up, battering it against his nose. Baelish curses, and for a moment his control is shakened, and Sansa takes it.
Rolling out from under him, she reaches for her nightstand, and grabs her metal nail file.
And plunges it into his neck.
Littlefinger collapses on top of her, curdling gasps coming from his throat, blood bursting from his throat.
I did not miss, she thinks. I saved myself.
She rolls his body off of her, and sits up, staring at Littlefinger-Littlefinger’s body-in shock. She rubs at the blood on her hands, numb.
“Fuck.”
I killed a man.
Her door bursts open, the one corner of the dresser that she had managed to push in front of it is sent flying. Sansa does not scream, but slumps down tiredly, her shoulder protesting loudly.
“Little bird,” Sandor Clegane says, crossing the room to her in three long steps, covered in blood and gore. He kneels before her. “Didn’t anyone tell you to keep your hands clean.”
He can help me, she thinks. I prayed for him to come.
She lets her eyes focus, and looks down at him, and her hopes fall. His eyes are glassy, bloodshot. His breath reeks of alcohol.
He is drunk.
"If you scream I'll kill you. Believe that. I’m not like Littlefinger. You won’t be able to fight me off. That was good of you, though, little bird. I always knew you were strong." He takes her hands in his, examines them. Her breath comes raggedly, the adrenaline rapidly leaving her system. Clegane takes a flask from his pocket, and raises it to her lips. She drinks. "Don't you want to ask who's winning the battle, little bird?"
"Who?" she says, too tired and too frightened to deny him.
The Hound laughs. "I only know who's lost. Me."
He is drunker than I've ever seen him. "What have you lost?"
"All." The burnt half of his face is a mask of dried blood. "Bloody dwarf. Should have killed him. Years ago."
"He's dead, they say."
"Dead? No. Fuck that. I don't want him dead." He casts the empty flask aside. "I want him burned. If God is good,
they'll burn him, but I won't be here to see. I'm going."
"Going?" She tries to wriggle free, but his grasp is iron.
"The little bird repeats whatever she hears. Going, yes."
"Where will you go?"
"Away from here. Away from the fires. Up through Maryland. The bridges have burned by nows, I suppose. North somewhere, anywhere. Out of this fucking city. This fucking city ain’t no good for us, little bird." Sansa can hear a faint Texan drawl breaking through his speech.
"You won't get out," Sansa says, wrapping her fingers around his. He won’t let go of her hands, but he allows her to do as much. "The queen's closed up the block, and Stannis’s men are at the doors. We can’t leave.”
"I can leave. I have this." He pats the butt of his gun. "The man who tries to stop me is a dead man. Unless he's on fire." He laughs bitterly. "Stannis's men would kill us all. They're burning this building to the ground. The White House, huh? But Stannis would take you. He's too fucking self-righteous to let a pretty girl like you get killed. Besides, it would make him look bad."
"Why did you come here?" She rubs his calloused hands with the soft pads of her fingers, trying to calm him. She needs him to be calm. He cannot be sober, but she needs him to be calm.
"You promised me a song, little bird. Have you forgotten?"
She doesn't know what he meant. She can't sing for him now, here, with the sky aswirl with fire and men dying in their hundreds and their thousands. "I can't," she says, feeling the anxiety begin to rise in her again. "Let me go, you're scaring me." She hopes that this will provoke him, make him-make him do something, besides sit on her floor while the only light in the room is the city burning to ground around them.
"Everything scares you. Look at me. Look at me."
The blood masks the worst of his scars, but his eyes were white and wide and terrifying. The burnt corner of his mouth twitches and twitches again. Sansa can smell him; a stink of sweat and sour wine and stale vomit, and over it all the reek of blood, blood, blood.
"I could keep you safe," he rasps. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanks her closer, and for a moment she thinks he means to kiss her again. Instead his black eyes just meet hers, searching. Looking desperately for something. Sansa does not know what.
But she does not allow her eyes to break from his, and when she moves to take her hands from his and place them on his cheeks-her bloodstained hands on his bloodstained cheeks, they are both unclean-he lets her. The nerves of her shoulder are on fire, but she does not break contact.
“I will go with you,” she murmurs. “I will go. We will go now.”
He breathes, shoulders crumping.
“We can go. We can both go. Everything will be okay.”
She tries to believe the words coming out of her mouth, but Sandor Clegane is her last chance out of the White House alive.
:::
She does not scream when she feels the knife against her throat.
Clegane had gone before her downstairs, to the basement-they were going to go out the servant’s entrance. Even drunk, he was not completely useless. He would only be gone a minute, he said. They had gone up to the third floor when the fighting had broken through downstairs and began boiling up. Up and over and then down, he had said. That was their plan. And then they would run. He would carry her, he said, if he had to, off the grounds and they would go down the GW campus and then they would walk through the metro if it wasn’t fallen yet and they would go to Stannis and surrender in Maryland.
That was the plan.
Sansa Stark was a girl who had so many plans.
Sansa Stark is a woman who just wants to live.
“Ma’am?” she asks, feeling hot tears escape, falling freely down her cheeks.
"Very good, dear." The first lady leans in close, locking her arm around her. "You want to practice those tears. You'll need them for Stannis. Although I thought I told you to get a knife. You'll see I have one myself."
Sansa shifts nervously. "Ma’am?"
"Oh, spare me your hollow courtesies. Matters must have reached a desperate strait out there if they need my brother the dwarf to lead them-oh, you hadn’t heard that?-so you might as well take off your mask. I know all about your little treasons in the Rose Garden."
"The Rose Garden?" Don't let your voice shake, Sansa tells herself, the knife pressing closer against her windpipe. She doesn't know, no one knows, Hollard promised me, only Littlefinger knew and he hated the first lady. "I've done no treasons. I only visit the Rose Garden to pray."
"For Stannis. Or your brother, it's all the same. Your family. They’re all dead now anyway. You're praying for our defeat. What would you call that, if not treason?"
"I pray for Joffrey," she insisted nervously. She can smell the first lady’s breath, heavy with liquor.
"Why, because he treats you so sweetly?" The first lady brings the edge of the knife to the delicate skin of Sansa’s throat, worrying back and forth. Sansa feels the sting of pain, and a trickle of blood run down her throat. "This is real girl. No hiding, no barring your door. My brother Tyrion isn’t here to protect you from me. Perhaps it will give you the courage to deal with truth for a change."
Cersei sighs, displeased. "When you asked about Agent Payne earlier, I lied to you. Would you like to hear the truth, Sansa? Would you like to know why he's really here?"
She does not dare answer, but it does not matter. The first lady does not wait for a reply. Sansa had not even seen Agent Payne return to the hall, but suddenly there he is, striding from the shadows behind the corner as silent as a cat. He carries his gun unsheathed.
There is blood drying on his shirt, the red already fading to brown. "Tell Miss Sansa why I keep you by us," says Cersei. Sansa can imagine the cruel smile playing across her icy features.
Payne opens his mouth and emits a choking rattle. His acne-scarred face has no expression.
"He's here for us, he says," the first lady explains, stroking the knife up and down Sansa’s neck. She dare not
breathe nor move. She prays that Sandor will return soon, her eyes watching the door to the back stairs. She prays he will do it soon, and quietly. She does not doubt that Cersei will slit her throat. "Stannis may take the city and he may take the Oval Office, but I will not suffer him to judge me. I do not mean for him to have us alive."
"Us?" Her voice is high and desperate. All she wants is for Cersei to keep talking.
"You heard me. So perhaps you had best pray again, Sansa, and for a different outcome. The Starks will have no joy from the fall of Lannister, I promise you." She reached out and touched Sansa's hair, brushing it lightly away from her neck. “The Starks will not outlive us. You will fall before I do.”
I want to live, she thinks desperately. I was so close. I want to live.
She lifts herself up onto her toes, ready to throw her head back or her elbow or-
It doesn’t happen in slow-motion. That’s all she can think about, later. It all happens so quickly, too quickly.
She feels the first lady’s scream in her ear, feels her getting ripped back away from her. Sansa’s hands fly to her neck, her fingers curling around the blade of her knife as Cersei is pulled to the side away from her. It cuts into her palms, but she keeps it away from her neck.
“Floor, girl, get to the floor,” he yells, and Sansa throws herself to the rug a whisper before gunshots start sounding out, she turns her head, looking at Cersei’s body, crumpled to the floor. Sansa whimpers, covering her head with her hands.
She is shaking when it is over, and Clegane lifts her from the floor, and carries her to the basement before finally setting her back on her feet.
“Can you walk?” he asks, looking sober. His face is tired and gaunt, but his eyes are clear. He does not holster his gun. “It’s a straight shot from the door to the gate. A hundred yards.”
“I used to run that in high school,” she whispers blankly, eyes fixed on a point on the opposite side of the room.
Clegane sighs heavily, Sansa feels him cup her chin and make her look at him. “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to get out. Just… follow my lead.”
“It’s over?” she asks.
It’ll never be over.
“Yes,” he answers simply. “Twenty more minutes, and we’ll be in Bethesda. I’ll deliver you to Baratheon and you’ll be safe. You'll get looked at by one of those fancy Navy doctors. Your shoulder... I’ll make sure of it.”
She nods.
She can’t trust him. She can’t trust anyone.
She takes his arm anyway, and lets him lead her out of the building. This is her choice. It’s risk. She has to take it. She’ll take it with him. She does not have many options for her survival, but he has gotten her this far.
She leaves the grounds of the White House for the first time in months at a sprint, and doesn’t look behind her.
:::
The pawn crosses the board.
Pawn becomes Queen. She looks around, and doesn’t like how she’s gotten there. It is messy, she realizes. It has changed her.
:::
The skyline is soiled with the color of blood, the color of first dawn.
:::
( Part One: City of Cinder)( Part Two:City of Ash)( Part Three: City of Blood)( Epilogue: The Northern Town)
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