Chapter 28: In This Peaceless Darkness
Don't reject me,
I'm trying to seduce you.
Leave me in this darkness
If you can't give me light.
With the email that had announced the first meeting to outline the choreography, Tyrion had attached a spreadsheet with every major participant's contact information. Sansa had diligently made sure she had everyone's number in her phone address book and added Jaime's. She felt rather silly about it at the time — why would she call him? She had certainly never expected to receive a message from him. After her screen lit up with —
Text from Jaime Lannister to Sansa Stark:
Feeling any better, minx?
— she could only stare. Then, she closed her eyes and placed her phone back on the bedside table. She almost wished he did not show her kindness. Perhaps, if it were not for his encouraging words, which had shielded her from self-doubt, she would never have begun falling in love with him? Maybe she would at least not have realized she had? Her senseless, senseless heart skipped a beat when she had seen his name and read his words, but her mind, afraid and apprehensive, seemed to scold: I told you to keep your mouth shut; I told you not to get closer; I told you so many times you would get hurt. And now you will. And I told you so. She thought of his dance with Margery, of his passionate embrace with his sister.
You're not Cersei.
He will never be mine.
She did not text him back, turning on her bed to stare at the wall instead.
I should not want him to be mine.
When Tyene returned home, she began asking what was wrong. Sansa, who knew only too well what ailed her, could not stand mumbling any more lies, so she gathered her things and left for the only place that could bring her peace.
She slipped into the cozy twilight of the Lannister Ballet Company building and went to the studio she considered to be hers this time of day. She did not care to rehearse anything that night. She wanted nothing more to do with reality, which loomed over her heavily, ominous and rumbling like a storm cloud full of lightening. She came to the darkness glowing with street lights and moonlight because she needed healing.
She would not call her mother in the middle of the night again — gods knew, then father would come to check on her for sure. He called much more often ever since she had awakened mother with her tears. Ned was worried for his little girl, and Sansa preferred depriving herself of comfort to causing her parents any more anxiety. They had their hands full with Arya. She smiled a little. She wished suddenly that she were more like her little sister — careless and free. Arya would probably never have become infatuated with Jaime Lannister. Maybe her sister was right that day a couple of years ago when they had had a horrible fight — maybe Sansa was a stupid girl with stupid dreams.
She could not call Jon or Robb for the same reasons she did not want to call her parents. Besides, what would she tell any of them? If she so much as breathed a word of Jaime Lannister… She refused to even envision the nightmare that would ensue. She did not want anyone in her family to learn how foolish she was; she wanted her new friends to know of her idiocy even less, so she could not call Margery or Ellaria and had to escape from Tyene. She wished she could talk to Margery — she had never had a girl friend she liked and admired as much as her. Sansa's jealousy had quieted, partly because reason had not abandoned her completely, partly because she was overpowered by the much more shaking realization of the feelings that had caused her resentment. Left alone with her pain and the mortification at her own imbecility, Sansa resorted to the only other consolation she knew.
With habitual movements, she fixed her phone to her arm band and put on her headphones. She hit "play" and let herself go to a place where heartbreak did not exist, where music filled her being so completely she could not feel anything besides its beat. She danced, and the waves of pain ebbed from her heart. She danced, healing a little. She danced, danced, danced her heartache away. The darkness, the yellow and silver light were blurring, and the green eyes she saw brought her no torment.
Then, an awareness zipped through her body and offset the calming effect of her remedy. She stopped, and, though the music still sounded in her ears, it no longer permeated her body. She could be standing with her back to him, but she felt his eyes on her. She knew he was there.
The glass of scotch had done little for Jaime. His thoughts and his anger made him restless. He had tried working on the steps for another sequence but found himself unable to concentrate. Exasperated, he had picked up his keys and left his apartment. Speeding down the empty streets of King's Landing did little to soothe him. Finally, he drove back to the company's building. He knew that the minx seemed to find a bizarre kind of peace in its gloomy studios; perhaps he could, too. He did not expect to see her there after she had left the meeting almost two hours early, citing her health as an excuse. Like the night he had stumbled upon her when she was dancing as if she were a jubilant sylph — it seemed a lifetime ago — he paused to admire her motions, hoping that watching her would assuage his chagrin. There was something strange in her dance that night: she did not look like a magical being. Instead, her movements called to his mind a day at Casterly Rock, decades ago, when, as a child, he had seen a bird, her wing broken by someone's well-aimed stone, start falling toward the ground, her healthy wing clapping frantically but uselessly at the air. The bird — it turned out to be a young black kite — had fallen dead at his feet.
He did not know what gave away his presence, but she stopped and stilled. She took out her headphones and turned to him, standing with her back to the light, and he could not see her face.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, and he almost did not recognize her strained voice.
"I could ask you the same, minx," he parried. "Be careful of your answer, though — remember, you left the meeting earlier today because you were not feeling well." He made a point of looking her over. "You look fine to me."
He denied feeling any relief at the conclusion. She bowed her head like a guilty child, and Jaime realized that the minx had lied. He found it too amusing to be believed and had opened his mouth to throw another jibe, when something in her dejected countenance stopped him. He came to stand closer to her.
"What's the matter, minx?" he asked her without mockery. "It's not the doubts plaguing you again, is it?"
What doubts could there be? she mused. She was falling in love with him and would pay a high price for her heart's blunder.
"No," she answered, her voice a little shaky.
He tried turning her face up to see her eyes, but she gently moved his hand away from her chin, and her gaze remained downcast.
"What are you doing here?" she repeated.
So she has learned that attack is the best kind of defense.
"I was looking for peace, but I found you instead," he said with a smile.
She was silent, so he asked her, as if his questions could prevent her from leaving:
"Have you been trying to come up with new movements?"
"No," she answered. "I was looking for peace, but then you decided to waltz in."
She threw his words back at him without mirth or gleam of rhetorical victory.
He smiled more broadly.
"At least I haven't startled you like I did last time," he offered.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Were you leaving, then?" he asked.
She shrugged again.
"Minx, it's dangerous talking to you," he quipped, "one might never get away from your chatter."
No answer, not even a smile.
"Minx, are you sure you're all right?"
I'm sure that I'm not.
"I'm fine," she lied. You should leave, her mind warned her. Stay, an evil spirit chanted invitingly. She was frozen in indecision, and he spoke again.
"Well, since it seems that we're both affected by insomnia, we might as well use the time productively," he said in a cheerful voice that did not sound quite as careless as usually. "Have you thought of Nissa's second dance yet?"
She shook her head.
The second time Nissa appeared was a pas de deux performed by her and the king. Driven to desperation by her lover's coldness, Nissa would go to Azor, trying to seduce him, to remind him of their love, but to no avail. Sansa had not had the opportunity to think of that second dance, preoccupied as she had been with rehearsing the first and then shattering with her realizations.
Dancing is like making love… when you stop being a body and become a heart — you are dancing because every part of your being is pulsing with desire, and the only way to achieve satisfaction is by seducing your love with your movements.
The voice of her reason was fading, and her heart was calling; hope trumpeted its summons. She remembered the admiration of all those who had seen her dance at the gala; Jaime himself had said on multiple occasions that she danced well. People often told her she was pretty, and her mother believed her to be beautiful. Perhaps… Perhaps, if she could just dance well enough, she could break through into the depths of his green eyes. Perhaps, she could at least see again that look in their green abyss that made her breath catch when she replayed and replayed the recording of their dance and dwelled on her memories of him.
She took her phone from her armband and walked to the speakers to connect it. Renly had sent her the draft of the music he had created for the scene a few hours before. Her heart was beating a wild staccato in her chest and her hands were shaking. She thought she knew in that moment what Nissa would have felt.
In the semi-darkness, she could almost, but not quite, imagine that Jaime Lannister was not there, and the man standing before her was the figment of her inflamed imagination. But his presence was too powerful, too real, to be ascribed to her dreams. The music started, its tone seductive and plaintive. She began to dance and lost the erratic motions of a wounded bird. The grace, the splendor of her movements seemed more soft, more sinuous than ever before. For the first time since she had begun dancing for green eyes, she did not fall into a trance-like state. She saw him just as he stood before her, real and tangible, and he was more powerful than daze. Dancing with her heart, she had never been so awake, so free of reverie, so focused on the reality before her. It seemed that she saw every line of his face with greater clarity, as if her eyes had refocused. Her every motion began in the depth of her soul and was performed for him, as if her movements were ribbons she was throwing like paper streamers, and they could bind him. She danced around him, as if to encircle him in the magic ring of her steps. His eyes followed her, waiting, and she believed he would not miss a single batting of her lashes. She began to narrow her magic circle, coming closer, a little closer to him with each pas. She reached him just as the music softened almost to a complete pause. She stood before him, watching his face as the melody whispered and died around them, learning to see him and know this was he — the man she was unwittingly falling in love with. It was paradoxical, like seeing a familiar face for the first time. The music revived, its tempo and volume rising, and they began to move together. She had never felt more powerfully herself than in that moment; she had never before been so completely Sansa and no one else; and she had never wished for anything more strongly than for him. She could not read his face.
Every time Jaime saw her dance, he caught himself thinking that it was impossible for her to be more beautiful than she was as she floated or burned to the sound of music; and every time he saw her dance anew, she seemed more magnificent than she had appeared before. He watched her bewitching dance; watched as her white skin reflected streetlight, even as it seemed to shine with moonlight from within; watched her red hair catch fire every time she came out of shadows; watched her near him and stop, her eyes bright with a soft flame, her chest rising and falling with deep, slow breaths. He began to dance with her in the magical sphere she had brought into being. Holding her waist, the touch of their hands — sensing her warm body — made him loathe to feel cold emptiness against his palms.
The air they were breathing seemed to grow thinner; the ephemeral touch of the dance became less fleeting, as though they could savor more the same momentary brushes of hands. Her frantic heart was beating, singing its blood song to him. The music died another diminuendo, and they separated — Nissa's seduction was bound to fail. The last bout of impassioned music was meant to accompany the beginning of her jealousy, her madness, her despondency.
The moment his hands left Sansa, her mind reared its head: He will never be mine. Just as Azor would never be Nissa's.
She danced to the song of despair. She let herself imagine that she could caress him from a distance with every arabesque and every pirouette. The further she moved away from his body, the more she wished her motions could make him come closer. Like on the night she had first seen him, all she wanted was to take the place of that woman with long, curly blond hair, who could pull him as close to her as she liked and trace the line of his strong shoulders with her lips while she gave herself to him. Watching his expressionless face, she began to burn, and she danced in that flame — for him.
Jaime watched her retreat, the darkness nearer to her than he, the shadows fortunate enough to cling to her shape. He absorbed the sight of her glowing skin, her graceful limbs; the soft curve of her long neck; her lithe, balletic body; her tempting, slightly opened lips; and her gleaming blue eyes that called to him as nothing had before.
He wanted her. The longing was so entirely overpowering, there was no hiding from it, no ignoring the craving he felt for her body. He wanted to explore with his tongue every part of her mouth, learn every motion that made her whimper and moan. He wanted to feast on her youthful breasts, making her arch her back like a cat. To move to her sweet, wet cunt and kiss it until she lost all coherence, the last shreds of her coldness. Every inch of her alabaster skin he wanted to trace with his lips; every one of her long, slender limbs he wanted wrapped around him, pulling him closer as he thrust deep into her, enveloped by her heat. He yearned for her slender fingers to tangle in his hair as he fucked her until the only thing she knew was how to scream his name. He wanted her to always look at him the way she did now. He wanted her to feel for him the maddening lust that was sweeping him off his feet, and yet for her eyes to remain soft, so that when he took her enough times to be able to make love to her slowly, she would chant his name and look at him as if there was nothing in this world but him. He wanted her to love him with every part of her beautiful, innocent being. And it was this desire that pulled him from the tumult of lust and reminded him that he was the Kingslayer and she a virginal, virtuous slip of a girl from the incorruptible North.
The music ended, and she had stilled in the final pose. Another track started playing, breaking the enchantment; she walked to her phone and killed the sound. Her back turned to him made him want to bring her against him, trace the curve of her neck with his lips, warm his palms on her skin.
"I don't think I will remember the entire sequence," she said, and her voice startled him.
He would. He would remember every way in which her lungs drew breath. But before he forgot himself, pulled her against him, wrapped her legs around his hips, and covered her mouth with his own, he had to leave.
"Then you'll have to invent again, minx, — not the worst of tasks," he said.
Sansa was surprised by the sound of his voice, how low, and quiet, and strained it was. She turned to him and searched his face for a sign that could give her heart a single argument against the imminent onslaught of her mind. She discerned nothing in his unreadable expression.
If he watched her look at him in this odd way one more moment, he would act on the madness that had possessed him. He gave her a curt bow and left. Rushing down the corridor, he ran his hand through his hair, as if to pull himself back to his senses.
I must be going insane.
He left her in the darkness. There was nothing for her heart to hold onto. Her mind was victorious over its vanquished, moribund foe.
See how that hurts? And I told you it would, her reason whispered in savage vindication, as her heart collapsed onto itself.
He shut his flat's door loudly behind. If, when he had exited the apartment some time before, Jaime thought that he might return less restless than he was when he had left, he was cruelly disappointed. Images of Sansa kept flashing in his mind, constricting his chest a little too much to allow for normal breathing. Aside from his sister, no woman had ever been able to hold his attention long enough for him to desire her, yet there was no denying he wanted that blushing, Northern minx. Jaime threw his head back and laughed — it was not a happy sound. Truly, there had never lived a man less fortunate in his desires than he. He needed as much scotch as was to be found in his apartment, maybe more. He pretended that he could drown his lust in alcohol, refusing to acknowledge that the sickness of desire could not be cured with liquor. Surely, this attraction to Sansa was occasioned by his prolonged separation from Cersei. Certainly, it was an illusion — like the flickering light that made her hair seem as if it were woven from fire. Doubtlessly, tomorrow's hangover would be the last adumbration left of this deranging mirage.
She returned home to find that Tyene had left. Her roommate took to spending more and more nights without returning home until morning, if at all. Sansa only hoped that Bronn would treat her friend right. She disliked the emptiness of the apartment even more than she had Tyene's questions.
Her mind kept spinning the circles of the seven hells, in which she found reflected Jaime's face.
Why did it have to be him?
She grew intimately acquainted with despair that night. When she laid her woeful head on her pillow, she tossed and turned for what seemed like hours before she fell into a fitful sleep.
The twins were clinging to each other tightly. She tried pulling them apart, screaming in anguish, but it was as though her hands could not touch them and her shouts did not reach their ears. Like a wild bird that cannot understand the concept of a cage, she was beating against the invisible wall that separated her from them. Then, suddenly, she had taken the woman's place. She was encircled in his arms, her legs wrapped around his hips; his lips caressed her neck. Just as she was falling into a blissful, warm abyss, he brought his face close to hers as if to kiss her. His green eyes looked at her with accusation and distaste.
You're not Cersei.
Sansa sat up with a jerk, waking. Oh, she was going to go mad! She put her face in her hands, breathing heavily. What had she ever done to be punished thus? How was she going to live, working at the Lannister Ballet Company, plagued by fervent nightmares and no less insane daydreams?
Text from Sparkle to Ellaria:
Can you and I get together tomorrow? Just the two of us? There's something I need to talk to you about.
She did not know why she had reached out to Ellaria, and not to Margery or Tyene. She intuitively sought a motherly figure, if one who was very unlike Catelyn Stark. She never thought she would be able to speak to her own mother about something like this, partly, because she would never be able to hide anything from her like she could from Ellaria; partly, because she would be too afraid of unvoiced judgement or disappointment. Of course, mother would never say that Sansa had done something wrong, but she would fear reading this in Catelyn's Tully blue eyes. And she did not want to. Somehow, she was convinced that she would not see condemnation of her feelings in Ellaria's brown eyes. She hoped to find council and strength in their warm, chocolate depths.
Text from Ellaria to Sparkle:
Sure thing, hon. Does it have anything to do with why you left early tonight?
Sansa could not help a sad smirk. Of course, Ellaria would have noticed.
Text from Sparkle to Ellaria:
No, I just forgot to eat and had a headache. But I do want to talk to you, please.
Text from Ellaria to Sparkle:
Alrighty. Rose Garden Café?
Text from Sparkle to Ellaria:
Somewhere less crowded with acquaintances?
Text from Ellaria to Sparkle:
How about my place? I'll kick Oberyn out ;)
Text from Sparkle to Ellaria:
That sounds lovely. Thank you.
Tomorrow, then, she would begin learning how people lived on with hearts maimed by unrequited love.
