bakerstreet | Drawn to Light

Drawn to Light

The world can sometimes seem like a cold, wicked place, and more than likely, it actually is a cruel place. For days, months, years on end, you never catch a break, everything falling to pieces as soon as you pick it up. Maybe, despite this, you still try your hardest. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, doesn't there? The fates don't play favorites, so surely your number is about to come up. Or maybe you've given up and decided to allow yourself to barely float along with only bouts of anger or bitterness to keep you above water. There is no light anywhere, is there?

But there is. There's one bright spot in your life - a person who makes everything worthwhile.

It doesn't really matter how they came to you. What does is that they stay. Whether you admit it or not, you seek comfort from them...and, perhaps, them from you, if you're in the same situation.

So, whether you push them away, treat them right, or go so far as to worship them and put them on a pedestal, you don't want them to go now. You crave being with them, or at least being in their presence. Don't ruin this for yourself. After all, what would you do without your little ray of light? You'll do anything to keep them happy and loved. Anything.

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[ open. ]

[ She had been given the chance to leave.

That singular thought continued to run through her head over and over as she was captured with Tyrion, heard Cersei's screams, had feared the Queen would have torn her face off with her bare hands. She kept that fear as they were taken down to the dungeons. Had called out to Tyrion as they were taken to different cells, the fear feeling as if it would crush her chest inward. Would they torture her? Rape her? Cast her off King's Landing and onto the rocks and water below?

She had been given the chance to leave and had decided to stay. Stay with her husband. The smallest lion of the House of Lannister. His family was horrible. She had wanted nothing more than to leave, to rid herself of any association with their name. But during the wedding feast, she saw, once again, how her husband was being made to suffer the same kind of humiliations as she was.

There was a single moment, "her Fool" told her to come with him, to leave now. But she looked to Tyrion and knew she couldn't. Her father, her mother, Robb. They had been honorable people. It was the same honor that got them killed. Yet they never ran to save themselves.

She was no Lannister. She was a Stark and she would face the storm by her husband's side. Or try to.

So many times she had regretted her choice. Mainly in the darkness of her cell, during the embarrassment of the trial. Finding out Tyrion and Shae had been lovers all along. Yet she had felt such rage and indignation over the accusations laid against them. Joffrey was a monster and he had deserved the way he died. Why should she be punished further even after he was wiped from this world?

And that was ultimately what it was. Both of them being punished over and over for simply existing in this awful world.

Sansa had cried her tears in darkness and accepted her fate by the time Jaime had unlocked her cell. She had told herself she would be rid of this hell and, Gods willing, reunited with her family. Seeing him standing there with his torch, she could only stare, wide eyed and unbelieving. Her heart raced as she and Tyrion followed him from the dungeons, hoping he truly was helping them. The same went for Varys.

She waits for the brothers to say their goodbyes, waiting by the light, at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the door that would lead them to freedom. She opens her mouth more than once, wanting to thank Jaime and yet not able to find a voice before he leaves.

She only finds it when Tyrion walks towards her, only to stop and then walk away. Her voice is almost a whisper but sharp, panicked, ]

Tyrion! Where are you going?

Edited 2015-12-12 05:25 (UTC)

[ Tyrion would be lying if he said part of him hadn't expected Jamie to come through for him before this was all said and done. Though the relationship with the rest of his family may have been tentative at best and an utter joke at worst, things had always been different with his brother. His freedom was no real surprise, no, and it came with a profound sense of utter detachment. He's had hours upon hours with nothing more to do than reflect, to imagine, to consider what he would do should this particular scenario come into reality, and he knows even as he sets foot outside of his cell what it is he has to do.

He has to say goodbye. He has to sever the last thread that keeps him tethered to his father, and, if possible, has to spare his brother from the repercussions of saving Tyrion's life. So long as he shall live, his brother would not be punished for this. Not by Tywin Lannister, at least.

Bringing Sansa to bear witness to this, he realizes, could prove to be an incredibly stupid move should things get... complicated. Better that she not be implicated for prison break and assisting with attempted murder should they be discovered. He holds up a hand at her question, a firm and placating gesture, a plea for understanding and just a little unquestioned trust.]

There's something I have to do first- there's no time to explain it. If I'm not back in ten minutes, don't wait any longer. Join Varys, tell him I've done something unimaginably stupid.

[ He says it carefully, calmly.

And with only that as an explanation, he's slipping away through a hidden passage and out of sight before she can protest.

He didn't know what he would find there, candlelit and writhing in his father's bed. He didn't know, not really, that he would be taking up a crossbow. He didn't prepare for the mental ramifications that came along with tightening the chain around his lover's neck, or the way her body slumped lifelessly into the mattress.

When he return nearly twenty minutes later, there is loss in his eyes. A vacancy, absence, an air of utter misery. ]

We must go.

[ He whispers. Somewhere, distantly, a bell begins to chime. A low and hollow sound. An echoing, resounding, dull ringing. An alarm. ]

We have to go now.

[ And he tugs her forward gently yet urgently by the wrist. ]

Edited 2015-12-14 04:27 (UTC)

[ She waits for him there, staring out at the darkness as he disappears, fidgeting and not even noticing. She tries to keep her breathing calm, looking from the darkness to up the stairs, where Jaime said Varys was waiting, and then back towards the direction Tyrion had disappeared.

Those twenty feel like a lifetime, each second seeming to drag, each minute an agony as she takes a step only to step back down, fingers worrying at her worn and torn dress.

Sansa has to remind herself over and over that she can't leave without him. She won't. They have been through too much together. She stayed by his side and will continue to.

If only he stays by hers, as well.

Eventually, she begins to pray, really pray. She doesn't want to die here in King's Landing. And she doesn't want Tyrion, too, either. (Even if he did kill Joffrey. She almost wishes he had.)

She finally opens her eyes again at the sound of footsteps, blinking away the spots from how hard she had them squeezed shut. She squints out into the darkness and lets out a relieved breath at it being Tyrion, smiling some. It is short-lived, however. Seeing his face -- and the blood on it.

She flinches at the sudden sound of bells, looking up and then down when he takes her wrist and pulls her to follow him. Sansa goes without any resistance, grabbing up her dress with her free hand as they climb the steps. ]

Why are you--there's blood. On your face.

[ Where did it come from? What did you do? ]

[ He doesn't notice her smile, doesn't take in the shift in her demeanor or the anxiousness in her posture, doesn't think about how much time has passed since he separated from her to attend to his one last mission here. Doesn't think about anything. There is a particular numbness to him, a distance, a disbelief. Surrealism.

Is there blood on his face? Is it hers? Is it his father's? His free hand touches it, but he doesn't feel anything except dirt beneath his fingers. ]

Yes.

[ He agrees absently, thoughtlessly. ]

I suppose there is. Not for the last time.

[ He murmurs, pausing at the top of the stairs to look at her. Really look at her for the first time since this whole thing began. Perhaps the only innocent person left in this castle, this city.

Before he can say anything else, the door swings open, and there he is. Their bald savior, here to ship them away to freedom. To banishment. To leave this nasty world behind them.

It's time to go.

They're rushed away quickly and quietly, packaged into separate shipping crates and hauled to the docks by some poor ignorant fish monger.

It's time to start again. ]

[ She looks back at him in the dim light at the top of the stairs, eyes wide and fear slipping into her features, unable to say anything in response before Varys opens the door and pulls them through it. She wants to know if and how they will get out of the crates but she's still too worried about Tyrion and their escape to voice any protests.

It's only after they are on the boat that she hears the bells ring again and eventually Varys' voice comes through one of the holes in her crate. He tells her his plan, that he is coming with them and she will need to cut her hair and wrap her head before she can come out of the crate. She can hide her hair and face but Tyrion is too recognizable.

She whispers to him, asks if Tyrion is alright. Varys cannot give her an answer.

But as soon as she's given a knife and there is light from the dawn, she cuts as much of her red hair off as she can. She wraps her head and uses what is left to cover the lower half of her face. Varys gives her another shawl to cover the top part of her dress once she leaves her crate. It is risky, but it's done when there are few around on deck.

Sansa stays near the crate Tyrion is in, eventually chancing a whisper through one of the holes. ]

Are you alright?

[ She knows better than to say his name. ]

[ Time passes, he supposes. Time passes, and he comes to terms with things... in a way. Accepts them with the weary resignation that comes with an inability pretend that it didn't happen. Hours pass, and he alternates between trying to stay lost in his own mind to avoid the boring walls of the crate he's in and trying to stay in the present so he doesn't have to think about the look in his lover's eyes as they stare emptily at the ceiling.

Light slinks in through the holes in his prison, dimly illuminating the hay and the wood. The sea rocks them back and forth, and he feels sick for many reasons.

And there is the voice of his wife, startling him from a reverie because if he's being perfectly honest he'd forgotten she was on board with him. She's out of her box, then. Out and walking around in the fresh air. Good for her. May she never know the feeling of pissing out of a hole in the dead of night. ]

I'm in a box with no place to vomit and I've murdered my father. I've been better.

[ He answers back with a sharpness in his tone, voice only hushed by necessity, unsparing of her feelings and unashamedly rude. Not that she deserves it, not at all, and he feels bad the moment he snaps at her.

Still, he doesn't apologize. He's far too angry, far too empty, far too careless right now for that. ]

[ She flinches at the sharpness in his tone, having never been on the end of it before. But the words, once they register, have her pulling her hand away from the side of the crate, like it had burnt her. Eyes wide again, in shock. She looks away, grateful for the cover on her face, for it would surely give them away.

That must have been where he went. All that time he was away... he had been murdering his father. The bells...

She forgets they are even on a boat until the rocking brings her back to the present and she's shaking her head, her voice cracking when she looks back at the side of the crate, ]

Why?

[ Now they really can't go back. Tyrion was innocent of Joffrey's murder, she was sure of it. Now? Now he truly was a killer. Patricide was not taken so lightly in Westeros. ]

Edited 2016-01-06 09:53 (UTC)

[ It's the silence that follows his statement which brings forth the guilt more than anything, and he knows he's wrong to have responded that way. He feels like a cup that's been filled already and yet someone keeps trying to pour in more. No matter how hard they might try, nothing else will fit inside of him, not even the guilt or the empathy. He's swaying with the sea they're sailing and everything feels like shit.

At the crack in her voice, he heaves a heavy sigh. Turns his face away, though she can't see it. Should he feel ashamed? Perhaps not, Tywin Lannister was a monster every bit as much as his nephew had been, though in a different way. Everyone knew it, probably even sheltered Sansa. Murder is murder, he supposes, but he doesn't feel ashamed. Only justified.

Putting that into words in a way that doesn't make him sound every bit like the rest of his family, though, may just be beyond him right now. As spiteful as he might feel, as ragged and vindictive, he still has the presence of mind to value Sansa's opinion of him. He, for whatever reason, wants her to think of him as good.

After a long quiet, his voice comes out more softly than it had a moment before. There's a vulnerability in it that he couldn't hide to save his life. ]

...I wouldn't expect you to understand.

[ There is something rising in her. She's not sure what it is. Rage? Grief? Resentment? Whatever it is, the tears are starting to well in her eyes, her throat tightening painfully but she forces her voice out anyway. ]

Understand what?

[ She breathes hard, making the cloth in front of her mouth move from the air. ]

I have lost everything, Tyrion. I will lose my name across the sea, I have lost all of my family in Westeros. I have lived in that hell King's Landing, just as you have. Do not tell me what I can and cannot understand.

[ She manages to keep her voice low br sheer effort, rubbing angrily at her eyes when the tears want to try and escape down her cheeks. ]

[ She's right, of course. She's been through more than most people like to even think about, been through more than she gets credit for. She deserves better than what he's giving her now, better than anything he'll ever be able to give her again. He has no money now, no title, no inheritance. No land. He has nothing. Sansa walks away from all of this an orphan with a dwarf husband in an unconsummated marriage bearing the last name of the people responsible for the death of her whole family.

One day he will apologize for all of that. One day, he will do all that he can to make up for it. Today is not that day.

Today, he writhes in self-pity and suffering. Today he is selfish, and despite his better judgement, he wants to tell her everything.

His eyes burn in tandem with hers, though he can't see and neither can she. Instead, he offers her what she asks for; an explanation. ]

He was sleeping with the woman I loved. I walked in on her in his bed, and I...

[ His own voice falters. I killed her, too, he wants to say, but those words are simply too much. Simply more than he has in him right now. More than he's willing to face within himself.

He had loved her, had done all that he could to protect her.

And here is confessing the borderline infidelity to his wife, and he can't even begin to apologize to her for it on top of everything else. The sheer amount of explaining he would have to do... There's no way to do it through a hole in a box on a ship surrounded by ears and enemies. Not here. Not now. ]

[ It... hurts. More than she would have thought. She has no right to feel it, though. Not after the way she's treated him. Before they were married, after they were married. Even on their wedding night, she didn't want him in the same bed with her. She had given him a blanket but it was still lacking in the kindness he has given her since he arrived to King's Landing.

Tyrion isn't the only one feeling selfish or bearing selfish thoughts. She knows of his affair with Shae. Her stomach still twists with the burn of humiliation at hearing her speak about having sex with Tyrion in front of the entire court. She wants to ask if he really had stopped sleeping with her when they were married. But all she can think is, Not even a dwarf would love me.

But then what was there to love? She had beauty, had a great name that was now soaked in blood with "traitor" attached to it. She had been forced to hide herself away for the time she was at King's Landing. Making herself into what she felt she needed to to survive. A pretty bird in a cage.

She had trusted Shae. Thought her a friend. Now? Her voice is softer but there's a numbness to it. ]

Shae?

[ A beat, letting it all sink in more, ]

You still love her after what she did? How she betrayed us both?

[ There's no anger in her voice. It's deep in her, yes. But there's more sadness at Shae's memory, more pain. ]

Edited 2016-01-06 10:47 (UTC)

[ Hearing the name makes him wince, eyes shutting and staying that way. Open or close doesn't matter, though, either way he has the image of her in his mind's eye, rolling around on his father's bed. My lion, she'd said, meaning not Tyrion but rather the man who'd sentence him to the watch. It burned his ears then, it burns them now.

Does he still love her?

WIse men say there is a fine line between love and hate. He would have continued to love her after she testified against him, would have felt like he deserved it after the way he'd sent her away, but that? ]

Not. Anymore.

[ He grounds out slowly, a forceful and deliberate calm, a darkness in his tone that says he's doing his very best to maintain his temper on the subject. He's not doing a very good job, but he's trying.

And that's all he has to say about that particular question. ]

[ She can hear it in his voice that this is not a subject they should talk about anymore. His voice sounds angry and raw in a way she's never heard before. And maybe, perhaps maybe, she's relieved by the answer. That even Shae had gone too far with Tyrion.

Sansa is content, somewhat, to let it end there. For now. She is still upset with what Tyrion has done but she has a partial understanding of his actions now. It's enough to mull over as they continue on their journey, the sun rising higher in the sky and the waves rolling on and on. She listens to them, comforted in a way she never was by them at King's Landing. ]

[ He welcomes the silence that follows. As deprived as he is of social interaction in that box, he thinks it's for the best. He can hardly control his mind, let alone his mouth, there's no telling how many bridges he might burn given free reign much longer.

The rest of the voyage is a miserable and sleepy blurr, and he's jarred from slumber when they haul his crate up and carry it out. Varys sees them safely to shore and to location remote enough that neither of them will be seen. When he tumbles out of the box, he's looked better. Trapped in his own clothes, sweating and crying and pissing for days, hairy and unshowered, overall an unpleasant picture, there's no denying. What isn't unpleasant is the spread of food on the table before them

More than that, the wine. Gods, does he need a drink. It's the first thing he goes for, and he drinks away the thirst far more quickly than he ought. ]

[ Sansa is there, arms full of the new clothes Varys had picked out for her to help her blend in with the rest of the population, but wanting to make sure Tyrion was okay. As well as any person could be after being left in a crate for a ship voyage.

She had asked Varys more than once if they really had to leave him in there and he had insisted it was necessary. Tyrion was much too recognizable as a dwarf with gold hair.

She will not ask him if he is alright when he tumbles out of the crate and the smell is too much for her to go near him. But after he keeps drinking more and more wine... ]

Tyrion - are you sure you should be drinking so much?

[ Her question falls on momentarily deaf ears as he swallows with such gusto he can hear it. It hits him a moment later, though, and he lowers the drink abruptly. Pants heartily as his stomach churns, abruptly and uncomfortably full after having been empty for an uncomfortably excessive amount during their trip.

Not that he had much of an appetite for anything that wasn't fermented.

He catches his breath and then shoots her a look, something consternated but resigned. ]

I'm sure I should be drinking more.

{ He responds flatly, though his tone carries no real ill will or ire. Just a dark, humorless comedy. ]

As a matter of fact, it's the only thing I'm sure of anymore.

[ And with that, he'll raise it to his lips to take another drink. Slower this time, at least. ]

[ Sansa only frowns at Tyrion, her brow pinched with worry as she watches him. She looks over at Varys and he silently shakes his head at her before gently touching her shoulder and telling her to go change. That she will feel much better once she is in clean clothes.

She looks back at Tyrion before nodding to Varys and doing just that, walking swiftly past her little husband.

Once she is out of sight, Varys sighs, ]

Food in your belly will help to soak up all that wine you want to pour down your throat.