thespherelogs | tough love and a tape measure

Entry tags:

tough love and a tape measure

Who: The eldest Stark children.
What: A special delivery.
When: A few days after her memory was broadcast for everyone.
Where: Robb's dome
Warnings: None yet. To be updated as they arise.

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Sansa had been incredibly happy to see her eldest brother arrive, don't get her wrong. She thought she'd never see him again, that even the Sphere could not bring him here. But there was Robb, though he seemed far older than the boy she'd last seen in Winterfell. She's sure he felt the exact same way. But that didn't stop them from falling into old patterns as quickly as they came.

Growing up, she'd always been antagonistic towards Arya, the girls as different as could be. But Robb had been so much the more like her. He'd played Monsters and Maidens with her, Come into my Castle, but soon enough he wouldn't be bothered to play games with her. He had to do other things with Theon and Jon and so sweet Sansa felt more isolated because she was a girl and didn't play at boy things.

She still didn't play at boy things, truth be told. There was very little play in her life, but so far the Sphere had allowed her to let some of it back into her life. She had new music here, good friends, and a job she greatly enjoyed. One she enjoyed so much that she continued working on the clothing for her eldest brother and his skeleton of a girlfriend, even though she was furious with him. She knew it would take time for him to forgive Theon, but he should at the very least have trusted her judgement with him, trusted that he had paid his price for all he'd done. But that didn't mean she wanted to wait around for it to happen.

Keeping her face a practiced neutral, she raised a hand to knock on his door.

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He knows she's mad at him and he knows how well Sansa can hold a grudge. They had their fair share of arguments back in Winterfell and, even if she didn't push or pinch like Arya did, she knew where to gut punch with her words. He could remember the tongue lashing she gave him when he and Jon played the prank on the girls in the crypts, where Jon pretended to be a ghost. He could remember how she scolded him if he didn't behave exactly as she thought he should, and while it was pleasant to see she hadn't changed, he wasn't exactly glad it was directed to him about Theon.

Still, ignoring the things she said before, Robb let her into his dome. There were no signs of anyone else having stayed there. For the most part, it was clean, though there was an empty bottle of wine on his counter. Otherwise, he'd been careful to make sure that nothing was out of place when Sansa arrived. Almost as though their mother was coming to visit.

"Sit anywhere you wish." That really went without saying.

The empty bottle of wine catches her eye, but she says nothing out-loud, instead making careful note of it.

A few more steps into the room and she moved to the counter, but didn't make to sit. "I'll stand, if you don't mind." Easier to dash out if she had to.

Not wanting to waste time, she sets a package on the counter near the bottle of wine. "I've a few things in there, both more what we're used to, and some of the more modern clothing here I think you'd like. There's a warm shirt with a hood I think you'll like." That particular hoodie she had embroidered a crown on the hood, and a direwolf upon the breast.

"There's a dress in there as well, for your girlfriend." Something simple, something Shae or one of the lesser ladies would wear.

That tells him enough about her mood. It was obvious he was going to have to brace himself for another tongue lashing and likely a brawl. Sansa had always been the sister he loved most and felt closest to, but gods be good, they always seemed to butt heads. She was strong willed, just like their mother, who made sure to speak her own mind to Robb as well, even when he was king.

He nodded, grateful for the gesture and thanked her, but he stiffened at 'girlfriend.' Was that what was bothering her? "She isn't-" he made a half hearted protest, but lacking the energy to go fully into it. Instead, in a warning growl, he said, "No one is replacing Jeyne."

She wasn't upset that he had a girlfriend. She had her boyfriend, she'd had a boy on the side here and there. She was a Queen and she was able to do such things. And Theon had given her permission, given what he could not give her. In fact, she was happy he'd found someone so quickly, but... From what she had seen from the girl... She was unimpressed.

No, what bothered her was everything else. At the very least, it would do him well to acknowledge her relationship with Theon, if nothing else, and be happy she'd found someone that understood what she'd gone through. Just as she was happy Jon had found the Wildling girl. And for all her talk of lack of status here... The girl may as well have been from Flea Bottom.

"Did I say that, Robb?" She looks at him plainly. "A girlfriend is different from a wife. Kings and Queens are allowed their consorts. King Robert had his whores, and Cersei her brother."

Edited 2020-07-02 19:15 (UTC)

He didn't object to Sansa's relationship with Theon, but he didn't acknowledge it either, preferring to not address anything related to Theon. He was making his in connecting with his former friend and brother in his own way, without eyes or involvement of others. He hadn't forgive him, and likely never would, but they were growing amicable and oddly, Theon was sometimes the only one he could talk to about the matters weighing his mind.

But as soon as Sansa pushed him to do things her way at her pace, he tensed up and simply refused. They were both stubborn creatures, and while she was Queen of the North now, it didn't remove that he was once King. Crowns were more likely to clash.

He couldn't tell if she was implying that Eponine was his whore or if it was his guilty conscience. Rather than fight with her over terminology, he just brushed it up to his mind playing tricks. "I dishonor Jeyne enough, I don't want to further add to it by replacing her." It made him sick to think about, especially when he thought of how he held her last and watched the life drain from her eyes. "I have no nightmares next to her."

Well maybe if you told her that things would be different. But no one from Westeros was ever accused of being a great communicator.

She can't help but to roll her eyes at her older brother.

"So do I dishonor my husbands?" She expects no answer, and indeed doesn't want one. What she does wonder, however, is what Jeyne would say to know her husband had so quickly found another. Would she take comfort in the fact that they were only together physically? Or would that bother her more than a mental connection? Regardless, it's not her place to ask.

"And I have few next to Theon." But she still had them. "Is the wine helping with that?" She glances over at the bottle.

Since when was she married? He doesn't ask though, not sure he wants to hear the answer. It was difficult enough knowing how Westeros had changed since his death.

He knows he fell into someone's arms quickly, but that seems to be something he does often. It was his outpouring of grief, his means of coping. Jeyne would be hurt by that, she would say nothing but give him the same look of wounded accusation that their mother often gave their father. Each time he woke in the morning, he had to contend with his grief and guilt, he didn't need Sansa to bring it up.

He looked at the bottle, glad there was only one. "It dulls the pain."

Ex-husbands, really. But there was hardly any marriage in either one worth honoring.

Speaking of: "You sound like Tyrion." He'd been tripping over himself drunk on their wedding night, pathetic as he wished for her to love him in the dark if she could not in the light.

And that's the thing. Sounding like Tyrion Lannister, no matter what, was generally not a good thing.

Given his feelings about the Lannisters, it's enough of an insult that it stings. He had been gracious enough to Tyrion when he visited (at least in his opinion), but he never felt warm towards the imp.

He frowns, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Everyone searches for some way to suffer the darkness, Sansa. We just never saw the way father did. He kept his ghosts to himself, as I have tried to."

It's not an insult, but she can't expect him to know that. She supposed she could consider the only surviving Lannister a friend, when all was said and done.

"Do not talk to me of suffering the darkness, Robb," she says, her voice even. It's in that even tone that the danger lies. "Not when I am the one who has to bury you."

He rubs his face, feeling the tension growing even more taut between them. "Sansa," he sighed, exhausted and not wanting to get into another row with her. "Speaking of the darkness doesn't mean you don't have your fair share of it or that you haven't suffered. But fine, I won't speak of it at all." Only what she wanted because Sansa was the queen and she got her way.

"Do I owe you anything for the dress?"

It was frustrating actually, that people would cowtow to her will just because she was Queen. If someone had a good argument, she would be happy to hear it.

"Yes, but none of us have sought to hide our grief at the bottom of a bottle." She could have, easily. But she'd had to keep her wits about her, even in the face of such tremendous losses. Apparently Robb was spared that particular requirement. He could cry and drink and whore. No Queen would ever be allowed that.

Robb could be sad, he could mope, and he could find a girl he wanted and no one said anything. Sansa could do none of those things. She had to carry on, pretend there was nothing wrong, like she wasn't praying every day for the death of those who kept her. Cersei had found wine allowed her freedom under the guise of drink. But never Sansa.

"No. It is a gift." She wouldn't take money from her brother.

Normally he might argue, but fighting about his private life, when his guilt already ran so deep, he didn't feel up for the argument.

"No, but they had to cope in different ways." He had always held his father was perfect, but only after coming here did he see how much their father held back in his emotions. He could understand it more clearly now, knowing that loss was such a festering wound that it was easy to shut off the flow of it. His father never drank, but he found other ways to numb the pain.

"I'm not you, Sansa." He said simply, feeling the need for another drink when this was done.

"That much is clear."

The sigh she heaves is momentous and the motion of it brings her to sitting down at the table as Robb had earlier bid her.

"Robb. Look. I care for you, I do. You are my blood and my brother, and my second son shall have your name." The first was going to be Eddard, fight her. Third son would be Theon. If she ever decided to settle back home and find a man willing to the prince, with no hopes of ever becoming king himself.

"But it pains me to see you like this. Drinking, whoring. I'd have thought you were better than this."

"I thought we made it clear that I'm a failure as both a king, son and a man?"

It's a low blow, but he's exhausted and her words had stayed with him. She had not said all of that, but it was what he had taken from it. Drinking and whoring, that would stay with him as well. He could imagine his father's face and his mother's sharp words. It was as if Sansa was speaking with her voice.

There was no other argument he could give. He knew he was doing wrong and only acting in a way that would shame their father. He sighed, looking down at his hands, feeling that heaviness around his shoulders again.

"I'm not better."

"I said no such thing. I will name my sons, should I have any, as I choose, and I shall have one named for my father as well as my brother. Foolish though they may have been."

She watches him, how he moves, how he speaks. He looks so heavy.

"But you can be." She wants to offer him hope for this new life here under the sea.

"I don't know how."

He could only be himself and that seemed to be steeped in foolishness and failure. He wanted to be like their father, but he fell short of the mark. He wanted to be a man that Jeyne would be proud of, but he only managed to get her killed.

He rubbed his face, letting out a deep sigh.

"What do you want me to do, Sansa?"

That... is a very good question. One that hits in a way that makes her shoulders sag just slightly.

"I want my brother back." and even as she says it, she knows she never will.

"I am your brother, always. I won't ever be the same as before." He sighed and reached for her, squeezing her hand. He was closer to her than almost anyone. Only Jon rivaled that bond, but none was more like him than Sansa.

"I need to grieve in the form it comes, but I will ease my drink for your sake. What I need...what I want...is if this place could find a way to lift the full memory of what happened. If the screams can go away and the sight of her blood, I might be able to find my strength again. Then if they return, I won't feel so broken."

She squeezes his hand back, a gesture of understanding, of a begrudging acceptance.

"Grief I understand. I shall do all I can to see if there is a way to ease the memory and the pain for you. Perhaps there is a sort of magic we can find." It was a plan, at least, and allowed Sansa to feel as if she had a bit more control over her brother's situation. That she could protect him just a bit.

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tough love and a tape measure

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