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fic: tonight the shadows had their say
Title: tonight the shadows had their say
Fandom: Game of Thrones/ASOIAF American AU
Characters: Sansa Stark, Arya Stark
Rating: PG
Summary: And Sansa sometimes thinks she and Arya will be the only two to survive because they’re the only ones who know their own shadows.
Written for:
AMERICANA FICATHON
Read it there
Sansa wears a skirt slit up to here and a neckline that plunges like a waterfall, and yet she still manages to look demure. Prim, even, Littlefinger says admiringly (admiration doesn’t mean anything to her anymore, but when it comes from Littlefinger it’s a useful gauge of effectiveness). It drives men into a froth of longing and women into a murderous rage, but no one touches Sansa unless she lets them (anger or lust or jealousy—it doesn’t matter—it all feels the same, and she knows how to use every flavor of emotion the way her sister uses a switchblade). She never does any touching of her own out here: she doesn’t have to. (Absence, Sansa knows, is sharper than presence could ever be, and heavier too.)
Sansa glides into the bar like she isn’t there at all, like she’s somewhere apart, like sunlight cutting through shadows that doesn’t actually touch the shadows themselves, and everyone watches her and she watches no one.
--
Five state lines away, Arya wears deadliness like a dare, and maybe it should look absurd on someone so small, but it’s all the more terrifying for that, and she knows it (Jaqen used to tell her that she made a man’s bowls loose, and she thinks it’s the pettiest compliment she’s ever been given). People freeze up when they see her, fingers closing too tight around shot glasses and dance partners’ hands, a moment of terror that gives everything away (not that she needed that moment—predators know anyway, and Arya is a Stark wolf). She makes more noise walking across the polished wood floor than a man four times her size, and the wolf at her side and the man at her heels don’t make any noise at all (she taught Gendry that, and he never understood why she never walked quietly herself. That’s why he takes orders from her and not the other way around).
Arya strides into the bar like she owns the place, like she’s pulling everyone else into orbit around her no matter if they know who she is or not, and no one looks straight at her and she looks straight at everyone.
--
Sansa learned the art of makeup from Daddy’s golden-haired mistress. Daddy hated Cersei and Cersei hated Daddy, but they both held to other things more tightly than they did to hate. For Daddy it was loyalty, for Cersei, it was power, but it amounted to just about the same thing in the end (if the end result is the same, does the motive matter at all? Arya doesn’t waste time thinking on such things, though Sansa does. Either way, they both know the answer to that question).
Cersei applied makeup like warpaint, the slash of fierce red and sweep of jet black signaling readiness for battle. Sansa’s hands have a lighter touch, her colors more muted, nothing so gauche and obvious, but the end result is the same (when Sansa puts on her face, armies tremble).
--
Arya learned the practicalities of fighting from a man with an accent she could never quite place who called her boy and ended up giving his life for her. Daddy called Syrio her dance master, and he had looked both proud and bemused when he hired the man (Daddy never knew what to do with his daughters, but occasionally in his flailing he struck on the right thing), though he never paid attention to him after that initial hiring.
Syrio treated battle like a dance, a craft to be mastered with discipline and devotion, even—sometimes—a thing to be done for the pure joy of movement. Arya learned her lessons well: no one can dance like she does, and now everyone who sees her fight knows that grace can be terrifying. (The only times she ever allows herself to be wistful is when she thinks of what it would be like to dance only out of joy. But she’s a Stark, and joy isn’t a word that Starks could ever call their own, and she doesn’t often waste her time thinking about such things.)
--
Sansa’s got a dead brother, a crippled brother, a crazy brother, and a sister who is her shadow (not in the comforting way of children, where shadow means something that’s never far away from you. It could never mean that for Starks, because to be a Stark means to be far away. For Starks, shadow means: my soul in inverse. And Sansa sometimes thinks she and Arya will be the only two to survive because they’re the only ones who know their own shadows). She’s got a dead father and an undead mother and a wolf that had its head chopped off and then took up residence in her soul (she hides it well, but she hears the howl when other people only hear the scratchy music itching its way across the room from the phonograph in the corner).
Sansa’s got a vanity littered with tubes of lipstick and bottles of perfume, a drawer full of lingerie, a mirror on every wall, and a brass bed with starched cotton sheets (silk is too obvious, and Sansa knows the value of subtlety).
And that is all she needs to make war.
--
Arya’s got a dead brother, a crippled brother, a crazy brother, and a sister who is her shadow (sometimes when she turns quickly, the swirl of her duster looks like the swirl of a skirt and for a moment she thinks she and Sansa are actually one person just living two lives). She’s got a dead father and an undead mother and the bastard son of the man her daddy died for who would die for her in turn always at her heels. She’s got a wolf who walks beside her, but not ever a step ahead, and her wolf doesn’t howl because she doesn’t need to.
Arya’s got a collection of switchblades, three pistols , a car that runs long and low and sleek like a wolf, and a shotgun in the trunk (but she rarely needs to pull it out; things almost never get that far before she puts an end to them).
And that is all she needs when she starts to dance.
--
(Sansa’s got a pearl-handled pistol in her handbag, but she’s never used it, and she never will. She carries it for the weight of memories, but there’s no opalescent sheen of nostalgia around the edges: memory is cold and tastes like lead, but it has its uses too. Pride just tangles around your legs and trips you up: she’ll use anything she can get her hands on.)
--
(One night at a booth at a fair, carnival lights flashing and slicing through the popcorn-scent thickness of the air, Arya wins a little pocket mirror. She pockets it and doesn’t take it out again, but every time she wears those trousers, she feels the bump of it against the flesh of her thigh. She doesn’t ever both to look in the mirror because it doesn’t matter what she sees there, but the weight of it is a reminder not to underestimate anyone—a reminder of Sansa.)
--
Watch this: Sansa’s going to turn every man in this room into a writhing mess of desire and despair, and she’ll do it without touching them or speaking to them or even looking at them.
(She’ll do it by climbing right inside every single one of them.)
--
Watch this: there are two dozen men in this room, twitching with readiness to fight, and Arya’s going to bring them all down with her blades, her guns, her man, and her wolf.
(Arya’s going to bring them all down by herself.)
--
(Lovebites always litter Sansa’s skin and scars brand Arya’s. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, the end result is the same.)
--
(When the smoke clears, Sansa and Arya will be the only ones standing.)
Fandom: Game of Thrones/ASOIAF American AU
Characters: Sansa Stark, Arya Stark
Rating: PG
Summary: And Sansa sometimes thinks she and Arya will be the only two to survive because they’re the only ones who know their own shadows.
Written for:
AMERICANA FICATHON
Read it there
Sansa wears a skirt slit up to here and a neckline that plunges like a waterfall, and yet she still manages to look demure. Prim, even, Littlefinger says admiringly (admiration doesn’t mean anything to her anymore, but when it comes from Littlefinger it’s a useful gauge of effectiveness). It drives men into a froth of longing and women into a murderous rage, but no one touches Sansa unless she lets them (anger or lust or jealousy—it doesn’t matter—it all feels the same, and she knows how to use every flavor of emotion the way her sister uses a switchblade). She never does any touching of her own out here: she doesn’t have to. (Absence, Sansa knows, is sharper than presence could ever be, and heavier too.)
Sansa glides into the bar like she isn’t there at all, like she’s somewhere apart, like sunlight cutting through shadows that doesn’t actually touch the shadows themselves, and everyone watches her and she watches no one.
--
Five state lines away, Arya wears deadliness like a dare, and maybe it should look absurd on someone so small, but it’s all the more terrifying for that, and she knows it (Jaqen used to tell her that she made a man’s bowls loose, and she thinks it’s the pettiest compliment she’s ever been given). People freeze up when they see her, fingers closing too tight around shot glasses and dance partners’ hands, a moment of terror that gives everything away (not that she needed that moment—predators know anyway, and Arya is a Stark wolf). She makes more noise walking across the polished wood floor than a man four times her size, and the wolf at her side and the man at her heels don’t make any noise at all (she taught Gendry that, and he never understood why she never walked quietly herself. That’s why he takes orders from her and not the other way around).
Arya strides into the bar like she owns the place, like she’s pulling everyone else into orbit around her no matter if they know who she is or not, and no one looks straight at her and she looks straight at everyone.
--
Sansa learned the art of makeup from Daddy’s golden-haired mistress. Daddy hated Cersei and Cersei hated Daddy, but they both held to other things more tightly than they did to hate. For Daddy it was loyalty, for Cersei, it was power, but it amounted to just about the same thing in the end (if the end result is the same, does the motive matter at all? Arya doesn’t waste time thinking on such things, though Sansa does. Either way, they both know the answer to that question).
Cersei applied makeup like warpaint, the slash of fierce red and sweep of jet black signaling readiness for battle. Sansa’s hands have a lighter touch, her colors more muted, nothing so gauche and obvious, but the end result is the same (when Sansa puts on her face, armies tremble).
--
Arya learned the practicalities of fighting from a man with an accent she could never quite place who called her boy and ended up giving his life for her. Daddy called Syrio her dance master, and he had looked both proud and bemused when he hired the man (Daddy never knew what to do with his daughters, but occasionally in his flailing he struck on the right thing), though he never paid attention to him after that initial hiring.
Syrio treated battle like a dance, a craft to be mastered with discipline and devotion, even—sometimes—a thing to be done for the pure joy of movement. Arya learned her lessons well: no one can dance like she does, and now everyone who sees her fight knows that grace can be terrifying. (The only times she ever allows herself to be wistful is when she thinks of what it would be like to dance only out of joy. But she’s a Stark, and joy isn’t a word that Starks could ever call their own, and she doesn’t often waste her time thinking about such things.)
--
Sansa’s got a dead brother, a crippled brother, a crazy brother, and a sister who is her shadow (not in the comforting way of children, where shadow means something that’s never far away from you. It could never mean that for Starks, because to be a Stark means to be far away. For Starks, shadow means: my soul in inverse. And Sansa sometimes thinks she and Arya will be the only two to survive because they’re the only ones who know their own shadows). She’s got a dead father and an undead mother and a wolf that had its head chopped off and then took up residence in her soul (she hides it well, but she hears the howl when other people only hear the scratchy music itching its way across the room from the phonograph in the corner).
Sansa’s got a vanity littered with tubes of lipstick and bottles of perfume, a drawer full of lingerie, a mirror on every wall, and a brass bed with starched cotton sheets (silk is too obvious, and Sansa knows the value of subtlety).
And that is all she needs to make war.
--
Arya’s got a dead brother, a crippled brother, a crazy brother, and a sister who is her shadow (sometimes when she turns quickly, the swirl of her duster looks like the swirl of a skirt and for a moment she thinks she and Sansa are actually one person just living two lives). She’s got a dead father and an undead mother and the bastard son of the man her daddy died for who would die for her in turn always at her heels. She’s got a wolf who walks beside her, but not ever a step ahead, and her wolf doesn’t howl because she doesn’t need to.
Arya’s got a collection of switchblades, three pistols , a car that runs long and low and sleek like a wolf, and a shotgun in the trunk (but she rarely needs to pull it out; things almost never get that far before she puts an end to them).
And that is all she needs when she starts to dance.
--
(Sansa’s got a pearl-handled pistol in her handbag, but she’s never used it, and she never will. She carries it for the weight of memories, but there’s no opalescent sheen of nostalgia around the edges: memory is cold and tastes like lead, but it has its uses too. Pride just tangles around your legs and trips you up: she’ll use anything she can get her hands on.)
--
(One night at a booth at a fair, carnival lights flashing and slicing through the popcorn-scent thickness of the air, Arya wins a little pocket mirror. She pockets it and doesn’t take it out again, but every time she wears those trousers, she feels the bump of it against the flesh of her thigh. She doesn’t ever both to look in the mirror because it doesn’t matter what she sees there, but the weight of it is a reminder not to underestimate anyone—a reminder of Sansa.)
--
Watch this: Sansa’s going to turn every man in this room into a writhing mess of desire and despair, and she’ll do it without touching them or speaking to them or even looking at them.
(She’ll do it by climbing right inside every single one of them.)
--
Watch this: there are two dozen men in this room, twitching with readiness to fight, and Arya’s going to bring them all down with her blades, her guns, her man, and her wolf.
(Arya’s going to bring them all down by herself.)
--
(Lovebites always litter Sansa’s skin and scars brand Arya’s. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, the end result is the same.)
--
(When the smoke clears, Sansa and Arya will be the only ones standing.)