aviary | OPEN | prompt four

[ She lifts her head — her chin rising, her hand lowering to her lap. Even if Sansa's heart bears the crown awkwardly, she knows how to wear it as if she were a queen. The lords of the Vale would have been reluctant to raise their banners if she had proved reluctant in her tasks as Lady of the Eyrie, but under Alayne's guise and Littlefinger's guidance she had learned what it was to be both beguiling and bold (though in truth this was sometimes still merely a pantomime). ]

I am a lady, Ser Jaime. [ Never Lannister. Never that name. Sansa can perhaps learn how to forgive a Jaime; but never a Lannister, no. ] And though I have caught glimpse of war, I have been spared most war-like things.

[ Which is to say, no. It would not be proper otherwise. ]

[ Jaime lifts his good hand in half-hearted placation -- his own little pantomime -- as if to lift away her offence on his up-turned palm. He knew her answer before he asked, of course. (Or, at least, suspected; the Stark children did run wild in their youth, even if everyone, most especially Sansa, seem to have currently forgotten.) ]

Well, that is what love is, my lady, [ he says, and he does not touch his fingers to the bindings of his golden hand because neither of them need the reminder of his experience with cutting. ] It isn't subtle. It doesn't creep over the body, only to be noticed when it's too late. It's sudden and unignorable and sometimes, years after you think it's healed and gone, you still feel it.

[ Some lies are love, that is what Sansa believes, if only because she has seen it and lived it and because that is what Petyr taught her. And lies do creep. They slink and they throttle. The beguile and protect and conceal what would bring most harm.

Still, she knows there is wisdom in his words. When she is alone, locked and shuttered away in her tower, tucked away where no one (not even Petyr) can see, Sansa allows herself to look at her own scars — the tattered remnants of what was once her life and, for a while, Alayne's life too. And every love she has ever held (every faith, every hope) has been just as the Kingslayer — no, the Queensknight — says. A wound, a tear, a weeping sore. Only when she unbinds herself, far away from prying eyes, does Sansa realize that to this day her heart still bleeds.

Shifting in her chair, her chin does not lower, her voice does not leave its queenly perch. ] If it is as you say, then I have been cut, Queensknight. More than a fleshwound. For all creatures starve for love.

[ Once, Jaime would likely have laughed at her for saying so in such a serious tone, with that tilt of her chin, without a glimmer of irony. She's a young thing still, and part of him does find it ridiculous to think that she has any idea of how the terrible weight of love feels.
But then, Jaime has lost more than the woman he loved since that day Jon Arryn died and all of this began. It's not fear of her position or her protectors that keeps his tongue still. (And that is for the best as that sort of fear rarely proved effective with him.) ]

And all those of us who starve for love are made creatures by it. Funny how these things work.

[ Sansa does not find it funny. In truth, she is not amused by most of the things that the captain of her Queensguard believes to be entertaining. Though the more she watches him, the more she listens even when her attention is directed elsewhere, the more Sansa believe this is a ruse — like Petyr and Littlefinger, a man divided (though she is reluctant to afford the Kingslayer leniency, even in this this). There are times when Sansa wonders about who it is that lies behind Jaime Lannister's face. Whether or not he is a Lannister at all; whether he is craven, whether he is sorry.

Slowly, Sansa lowers her chin and regards him more evenly. They are not equals nor will they ever be if Lord Baelish is to have his way. No. the Queen of the Mountain will reside and rule from a lofty perch and none shall touch her, all shall revere. (None and all but Baelish himself.) ]

And do you think the woman a fool for telling me such a thing? [ Your sister, the Queen. A mother of lies. Behind her lips Sansa bites her tongue to keep this truth from finding breath. ]

[ Jaime has no idea what woman might have said such a thing to Sansa and how long ago it might have been. He never knew Catelyn Stark well, but he'd like to think that in their few, brief conversation he got a sense of the woman at her most honest. If nothing else, he feels safe in judging that this is not one of her pieces of wisdom.

So he thinks, instead, of Cersei and whether he'd consider her a fool for saying such a thing. Maybe. Certainly when it came to love, they had both been fools. ]

Perhaps it's different for women.

OPEN | prompt four | TEMPTATION

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