Trigger Warning: Descriptions of Self-Injury and (Non-Graphic) Descriptions of Abuse
**Chapter 1*
After gently closing the heavy wooden door, Sansa slipped out of her soft leather slippers and padded her way across the cool stone floor to where her small desk stood pushed up against the far wall. Right above the desk was a tiny window, far enough above her head to where she couldn't look out of it without standing on her tiptoes, but on cool, clear days it let the most beautiful buttery-yellow sunlight stream in- and if she listened closely, she could even almost hear the chirping of birds and that made her happy, nonetheless, even without seeing them with her own eyes.
Today, however, was not a cool, clear day- the day had been besieged by rain and thunderclaps, but had settled down to a slow, weary drizzle as night fell. Night had come much too soon, as it often seemed to do on the days where her duties kept her in the motherhouse's library among all the books and parchments where she seemed to find the most enjoyment. She loved the motherhouse, and all of her duties here- especially in the infirmary, where she seemed to have a special talent- but the library felt like her special place where it was less about work and more about joy. If there was one thing she had to be grateful towards Littlefinger for, it would have to have been the thirst for knowledge and lust for learning he'd awakened in her during her time posing as his bastard daughter at the Vale.
Her thoughts turning toward the Vale caused a small frown to wrinkle her eyebrow- as it often seemed to do. Shaking those thoughts away- emthey had their own time and place/em- she settled at her small desk and lit the small, stubby candle resting in the corner. Opening one of the few drawers, she pulled out her hidden secret.
A mirror.
Mirrors were all but forbidden- at least, ones such as this that she held cradled in her hands now. There was one large, plain mirror in the motherhouse, in the large public space of the main hall- to discourage excessive preening and primping, Sansa supposed. It seemed every time one of the Septas stopped to glance at herself for more than just a brief moment, discouraging looks and tuts always found them from the surrounding women. Vanity, vanity. Sansa almost laughed to think of the vain girl with a head full of fairytales and songs that she had been back in King's Landing. It seemed like so long ago.
No, Sansa never looked in that mirror. She hated the sad sighs and knowing looks- what did they know, anyway?- that followed. She'd almost prefer people to think her vain than to look on her with pity.
Sana ran her fingers along the fine silver details engraved all around the smooth, cool surface of the mirror, and on the back. It was a beautiful mirror, small enough to fit completely in the palm of her hand. She'd received it down in the infirmary years ago, from a dying highborn lady.
She'd had a bleeding sickness, and not much longer left to survive. Her sons, frightened, had brought her to the motherhouse, begging for them to heal her. The maester had told them that there was nothing they could do except to make her last few days comfortable. The lady had chosen to stay, sending her sons away decisively. She'd been inexplicably drawn to Sansa, and had told her so that very first night as Sansa helped her bathe.
"Your hands," she'd said- her teeth were rimmed red with blood, her voice watery. "They are soft- not the course hands of a Septa used to a hard life. What is your name?"
Sansa looked at her searchingly- did she somehow know her identity? As far as she knew, the people of Westeros thought Sansa Stark to be long dead. She twisted the sponge out, and brought it to the lady's back. "Sansa," she said truthfully- quiet but strong. She no longer had another name to go by, nor did she want one. She was Sansa, through and through. "I'm not a Septa... only a novice."
"Sansa... a beautiful name." The lady leaned back in the large copper tub. Sansa found herself relaxing. The lady had apparently never even heard of anyone named Sansa before. "How did a beautiful girl with soft hands and a beautiful name... get scars like these?"
Sansa used the mirror to look at her scar now in the dim candlelight. She reached up a thin finger to trace the jagged pink line that started high on her right cheekbone- curving down to the right side of her delicate mouth, cutting across her full lower lip, splitting it almost exactly in half and following the line of it up to the left side of her mouth where it then curled out to end almost two inches from where her earlobe rested.
"Almost like a smile," the lady had observed quietly. She reached out to trace it with a shaking hand.
No one had dared touch her scarred face before, let alone come out and ask a direct question about it- no one at the motherhouse even knew how she'd acquired it aside from the Head Septa and the maester- so Sansa had found herself allowing it.
"Who did this to you?"
Sansa had actually smiled then- only a brief one. "I did."
Sansa laid the mirror down on the desk, one hand still resting on her cheek, on her scar. She fingered it almost absentmindedly, thinking about the lady. The few days that she was at the motherhouse before her death, Sansa had all but completely taken over her care. She'd bathed and fed her, held the milk of the poppy to her lips as she drank, listened to her talk and answered her questions- about herself, about the motherhouse, about her scars. She didn't go into great detail, but had told the dying lady enough. It was therapeutic almost, to release that story she had all but kept inside since arriving at the motherhouse.
It was dark in the infirmary, only a few candles casting light and shadows on the stone walls. The lady was getting much sicker, coughing blood into the cloth Sansa held to her mouth every few minutes. Her brow was shining with sweat, and Sansa wiped her forehead carefully, making a soothing sound.
"Sansa," the lady whispered. "I admire you, and your bravery."
"Thank you, my lady," Sansa smiled gently.
The lady reached up to touch her cheek again. "I wish I would have had your bravery when I was a girl. Taking my own destiny into my hands, instead of being a pawn in my family's ambitions."
Sansa shivered at her words, so closely mirroring her own feelings.
The lady coughed again, murmuring something. She cleared her throat, then spoke more clearly, but only just. "Do you regret it?"
"Cutting my face?" Sansa asked. "No, my lady. I don't."
"Do you still cut yourself? Elsewhere?"
"No, my lady. I no longer need to."
The lady had asked Sansa for her bag- her sons had not brought many of their mother's possessions with them to the motherhouse, and everything fit in a small satchel marked with her late husband's sigil, one Sansa did not know. It was a badger curving around a dagger, on a field of red, beautifully embroidered. Sansa admired it as the lady pushed a weak hand inside, pulling out a small round hand mirror. The silver of it shone in the candlelight. Sansa hadn't seen anything so fine in years- she almost laughed to think that, in her younger life, she would have been unimpressed. Foolish girl.
"Take this-" and before Sansa could protest, she pushed it into her hand, "-and I won't accept a refusal. I bet you never look upon your reflection- ashamed, when you should be proud. Every scar is a badge of honor. Especially yours, dear Sansa."
'A badge of honor'... painful to acquire, but now worn with pride. Sansa could only just barely remember arriving at the motherhouse those years ago. Abandoned at the door by Littlefinger's men, her face still open and fresh and so painful she'd been almost delirious. The cuts she'd inflicted upon herself were the only thing more painful than her gifts from her 'father'- bruised and bloodied eyes, the torn flesh along her breasts, the broken ribs she'd received from his anger- which made her oddly proud that he hadn't been able to hurt her as badly as she'd hurt herself. She'd spent months in the infirmary as the maester and the Septas mended her, weaving in and out of consciousness- partially due to the pain and partially due to the milk of the poppy she survived on. The Head Septa had sat by her bedside everyday, for stretches of time, her cool hand soothing on Sansa's own fevered flesh, and when Sansa was able to finally talk she'd leant her ear to all of Sansa's secrets.
"I'm tired of games. I'm tired of chirping... I just want to die."
The Septa tutted gently. "But, yet, you're alive, Alayne."
"I'm not Alayne!" Sansa screamed. Her ribs burned and her mouth seared her fresh, the pain of a thousand daggers it seemed, feeling as if her face were being ripped open, split in half again. She sobbed. "I'm Sansa. Just Sansa."
"Sansa." The Septa repeated. She let the name hang in the air, waiting for the rest of the words that she knew were coming to fall from the girl's mouth, and she was not disappointed. Sansa spent hours, it seems, telling the truth of everything that had happened from the moment she'd left King's Landing. It felt so good, so freeing, to finally tell someone the truth, to not have to worry about keeping stories and keeping her courtesies. The Septa listened patiently, quietly, as Sansa explained how she'd regretted not going with the Hound on the night of the Battle of Blackwater, how childishly frightened she'd been of the one man capable of actually truly protecting her; how she had instead put her trust in the fool Dontos and how she'd been a fool herself for thinking Baelish would be the one to help her, keep her safe.
She'd begun scarring her own flesh there at the Vale- cuts on her stomach and her thighs, easily hidden by her proper dresses. She'd felt so out of control, a pawn in everyone else's games and ambitions, but the small cuts and the blood that released from them made her calm. The Hound's scars had hardened him and strengthened him, turned him into the man he was- frightening, quiet in his rage, yet somehow more honorable than those fairytale knights that didn't even exist, more honorable even than her beautiful prince who'd turned out to be nothing more than a monster inside. Each time the blade met her soft flesh she would not cry, but would pray for some of the Hound's strength to become her own.
She spoke words that no one had heard before, that she'd almost not even let herself say, detailing how Littlefinger had laid his hands on her- first gently on her shoulders, only a moment longer than appropriate as if she'd imagined it, then resting on her knee as they ate their meals, slowly moving higher and higher with each passing week. How he'd make her undress for him down to her smallclothes and make her expose her breasts to him so he could pleasure himself while making her watch as he spilled his seed on her flesh, moaning out her mother's name. How he'd made her feel guilty, like she owed him every little piece of herself for he was the one taking the risks, keeping her safe, how lucky she was to have him protecting her- how he'd said it enough times that she'd almost begun to believe it.
She explained being herded from one betrothal to the next like a farm animal, from Joffrey to the sad little Sweetrobin, and then to Harry the Heir. How that had been the final straw, and she'd gotten out of her bath one night and cut her face right in front of her most gossipy handmaiden, sure that the news of her mutilation would spread like wildfire. She didn't even know how the idea found her, exactly, but it was a success.
Littlefinger had come to her chambers in a blind fury, striking her and tearing her clothes, screaming at her so passionately that his spittle had landed on her skin and it burned her as if it were acid. She was frightened, then, that he would possibly rape her, but it seemed as if he couldn't even look upon her bleeding face. It was as if the spell that had connected her in his mind to her mother, his long lost love, was finally broken, and for that she was glad.
When the news of what had happened had reached Harry the Heir and a raven came explaining that his vanity and pride would not let him marry a ruined woman with a ruined face, the man she'd been forced to call her father had beaten her with his fists and rained his boots down upon her and cut her with his sharp little dagger. She almost thought he would kill her then, but she wasn't frightened, and she didn't cry- she had only laughed and laughed.
Other than the mirror, she only had one other secret possession. She crossed from where she'd been sitting at the desk to her bed and reached underneath her pillow to take the dirty white cloak hidden there. Sitting back at her desk, she closed her eyes and rubbed her face against the Hound's cloak that she'd kept all this time, and thought of him- not a day went by that she didn't think of him, ever since she'd been at the Vale. She thought of him whenever her fingers happened to brush her self-inflicted scars as she dressed each morning and as she brushed her hair back from her face. She thought of him as she performed her daily tasks around the motherhouse, as she meditated and prayed. She wondered about his health and his whereabouts, and prayed that he was alive and safe. She wondered if he still burned with that rage that was visible only behind those hard grey eyes, and prayed that it be calmed inside of him. She wondered if he, perhaps, thought about her from time to time, and prayed that he did.
It was obvious- so obvious- to her now that he had cared for her back then. She didn't know for sure how deeply, if it was as deep as she'd grown to care for him, but she felt her skin blush with shame as she thought of her previous fear of him. So childish, she had been. He was the only one who never had struck her, had lied for her, had offered to protect her when she had needed it most. And she'd all but spit in his face. Denied him.
"Now, she was grateful for him. For the comfort his cloak gave her even now, and the strength the thoughts of him had brought her during her time at the Vale. He hadn't spirited her away from King's Landing like a hero from a song, but he'd still saved her- given her the strength to save herself, to cut her own face and escape. And now, like him, she even had a scarred face and felt somehow closer to him for it.
She smiled wryly. emIf only the Hound could see her now...
No longer a pretty little bird, locked away in a gilded cage. Scared and harder, no longer a little girl but a woman of seventeen. No longer chirping courtesies and dreaming of the royal court and of being a princess, but living a quiet life among the Septas with only her scars and her memories and thoughts of him.
Blowing out her candle, she made her way to the bed once more. She moved to place the soiled cloak back under her pillow, but thought better of it and wrapped it around her shoulders. Laying down, she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep surrounded by the smell of the Hound- of dirt and sweat and fire.