milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Sansa comes downstairs, in a long dress of black lambswool. A cloak is slung over one arm - someone's planning to go for a walk after breakfast.

She sits at Bar, orders some porridge and milk, and begins eating. As she eats, she watches the crowd. It's such habit that she doesn't notice anything new until her porridge is almost gone.

Sansa sees the Door.

A startled motion tips her glass of milk, which thunks against the bartop and spills its contents onto the floor.

"Oh." If she can speak, this means this isn't a dream. You can't speak the words you want to in dreams. "Oh."

The Door.

For a time, Sansa sits on her stool, motionless. Then she begins wiping away small, stray tears.

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Anxiously, "But I have to! I can't risk it disappearing. I--"

There's a pause. "Or maybe I should." She runs a hand through her auburn hair. "Your magic could not tell me which path to take, could it?" she asks, only half-joking.

"Afraid not." A bittersweet half-smile. "Can't even tell me that. But if you don't want to go back, don't. Odds are good that the door will stay there, at least for a while."

Sansa breathes a huge sigh. She turns the handkerchief over in her hands. "It's very good," she murmurs, but it's a comment said distractedly.

"I do not wish to be caged," she says. "I have been caged here for a long time. Now I make bars and locks of doubts and fears. It is not easy, but-- there are things that must be done, correct?"

She looks over at Sam, sure that he knows this.

Sam looks at her. "I know it. And I also know that you can escape from anything, with enough determination and if you know how to go about it."

Well, he believes it. But he knows it. It has to be knowledge. Has to be.

Sansa is silent for a moment.

"What did you escape from?" she asks softly.

She doesn't like to pry, but this might be the last time she gets to learn anything of this strange, attractive magic-man. Perhaps he'll forgive her her rudeness.

Since Sam doesn't see anything to forgive, odds are good she's forgiven.

"From what my father wants me to do," he says, struggling to put it simply.

"Your father the king." Sansa remembers that he was an exiled prince, at least.

"He still hopes you'll do what he wishes, even after he cast you off?" she asks.

"Hopes he can manipulate me into doing it is rather closer," Sam says, shrugging slightly.

"Ah." But there's still one more point....

"You told me something once about-- a portal? Please do forgive me, I can't recall it." She winces apologetically. "Does he want you to open it?"

"Sansa, there really isn't any need to keep apologising to me, you know." Sam shakes his head at her, smiling.

"But no. I closed the portal, thereby annoying my siblings enough that they kicked me out. And dear darling Dad, in payment for my earlier defiance of him, didn't stop them. That's all."

"Sor--" she begins, then smiles ruefully. "A habit - one I have to keep close to me outside the Door." See, she's apologizing in order to survive! That makes it all okay.

"It took me a long time to ask all this, didn't it?" she announces after a moment.

Makes it understandable, maybe. But not okay.

Sam grins at her. "It did, at that. And I don't mind telling."

"I am always so worried that I am asking the wrong thing," Sansa confesses. "I try not to offend others, you see.

She tries to piece things together. "I hope you don't ever do what your father wishes you to do. It seems like it will not be a good thing."

Her father even accepted her bastard half-brother, Jon. Fathers who let their kids get kicked out? Not so great in her book.

"Yeah, you're not the only one, Sansa. Suffice it to say that no, it really, really won't be good, at all."

Headtilt. "Well, I don't know what it's like for you in your world, but you really don't need to worry so much about offending people here, at least." And a sideways grin. "Takes a lot more than the odd question to offend me."

"I could have stood to question people more in my land, too," Sansa mutters, with a glance at the Door. There are a lot of memories waiting for her to open them, few of them comforting.

Which is why we're focusing on Sam!

"But your illusion-magics could cloak you from his gazr, correct?"

He shakes his head.

"No. Nothing can. Except... I'm doubtful if his influence stretches into the Bar. Which is perhaps why I'm so fond of the place."

One of the reasons, anyway. There's at least two others.

"Ah, so he knows you are here but cannot influence you," Sansa replies with a short nod.

Almost like herself with her enemies - or that's how she used to think, back when she thought of Tyrion as an enemy.

"You have lived some time, correct?" Sansa asks, some confusion in her tone. She's aware that she might be thinking of someone else.

"That's what I hope, anyway. It's not entirely possible to tell as of yet."

Sam sips his coffee. "You could say that, yes. Why?"

The girl sighs, running both hands through her hair.

Her voice is soft, a touch sad, her expression hard to tell, for she's looking at his handkerchief which rests in her lap.

"I thought I knew people - knew the world - once. I was wrong and...many things followed from my mistakes. If you have lived long, you must know people. What are they like, Sam? Truly like, beyond the songs?"

Sam thinks about this.

Thoughtfully, "People are... complicated. Some are good, and some are bad, but most of them are somewhere in-between, neither truly good nor truly bad. They're a mass of petty sins and good intentions. Individually they're often wildly unpredictable, but it's usually simple to say what a group will do. And important people, or people who believe themselves important, are rarely what they appear."

Sansa raises her gaze to look at Sam.

Petyr's words come, strong after months of ignoring them. Everyone wants something, Alayne. And when you know what a man wants you know what he is, and how to move him.

She smiles grimly. "Good intentions - I know them well. I was a stupid little girl. A piece in the game. That was why the important people never noticed me. It is good to be overlooked, but dangerous to be always as you appear, whether you are important or not."

Though her voice is distant, trapped in the past, she does realize she's speaking out loud. How will Sam react, she wonders.

He eyes her for a moment. And then grins wryly.

"True enough. Trick is to learn where you go wrong. You'd be amazed- or perhaps not- how many don't." Something in his tone suggests he approves of her, though.

Sansa brightens. That's the apple-polishing part of her, hungry for approval as ever.

"Trusting completely in songs and stories - I know that as a fault, now." She looks at the Door again, a strength in her azure gaze that wasn't there before. She's not entirely sure she knows what life is, beyond the songs, but Sam's words will help.

"Someday I will repay you your kindness, Sam," she says, turning back to him, a soft smile on her pretty face.

Sam grins, properly this time. "It's not mandatory, you know."

"It is if one wishes to do the right thing," Sansa replies easily. She glances at her spilled milk and mops it up - not fully, since they have servants here for a reason.

Then she straightens, taking a breath to steel herself as she does so. "There is a world that is waiting for me - more as a piece than a player, for the moment, but waiting for me nonetheless.

"May I keep this?" she asks, holding up the handkerchief. "For as long as it will hold?"