Sansa (night 1)
Walking down the long corridor to the nearest stairwell, Sansa felt oddly alone. She didn't know when she got used to Mr Clegane walking after her as he did most of the time. Stalker, she thought, slightly repulsed. And missed the stalking nonetheless. She squeezed the purse containing his phone for reassurance, but she didn't get any.
I will hurry, she thought. There can be no harm in walking on the second floor, can there?
The stairs were spiral and narrow, as though they were in a turret and not encased between two square rooms, the very last ones before the broadening of the passage, leading into the central area of the palace. Female giggling came from one of the rooms as Sansa diligently climbed the steps. They must be married for real, Sansa thought. For a second, she envied the couple. She had no intentions to marry at all.
A large door of dark brown wood stopped her thoughts. A mountain of unease grew within her with each step. She pressed the door knob, shaped as a head of a hideous snake with open maw. Their own door, of the room she shared with her partner, had only a tiny, childish looking snake. Why the snakes? she thought it a queer and rather poor choice of decoration, unusual in Italian styles, real or faked. It was something about the Martells she couldn't remember from the paperwork. She made a mental note to read it again later that night when Mr Clegane would be sleeping.
The door hissed and gave in. It was dark behind it. She felt the wall for a light switch but she found none.
A voice, a familiar voice rang in the darkness. Sansa stepped away from the door and leaned on the wall, wishing to melt in it not to be seen. Why are you afraid? she thought. You've been only looking for a glass of water... A light was lit in front. It made Sansa see she was in another empty corridor, and the illumination came from within a room several doors away. The voice laughed. It was familiar. She crawled toward the chatter, hypnotised, eager to listen. That's what we came here to do, isn't it?
She hid in a deep door frame of the room just next to the one where two men were talking. She knew both voices but she could only recognise one. One belonged to the man who attacked her in Venice, not Brune, the other one. Sansa's heart fluttered.
"He is such a fool," the attacker said. "One would think a man of his age should know better."
"Or worse," the other voice joked. "Alzheimer disease can start early, I heard. I guess they've never heard about it in Dorne. He could be watering his flowers many times over in his garden, not knowing that he ever did it."
"You have a gift for words, my friend." Sansa shuddered from the voice of the man who wanted to harm her.
"For lies, you mean," the other one said.
"Isn't that one and the same?" Sansa wanted to run away but she couldn't. She couldn't make sense of what they were saying either so she waited.
"Like the pathetic inventions that seven foot animal in human skin said to get himself out of the prison?," the other man drooled. "I checked on him when I saw him and it was worse than I thought."
"I thought you liked animals, more specifically, birds." The sharp voice insinuated, and Sansa wished she could grasp the meaning fully.
"I don't dislike them. When they don't stalk daughters of my dear childhood friends with sinister intentions. Cat would expect of me to protect Sansa... Even from herself. It's the least I can do. Young girls can be foolish and trust the wrong men..." A friend of my mother, Sansa realized. Mr Baelish.
"I wonder..." the attacker said and his voice sounded less sharp. "The security tape of what has happened that day has never been found... And old Mr Lannister had cameras installed everywhere..."
"There has been enough evidence though." Sansa was glad that her mother's friend had her best interest in mind, but she didn't appreciate the tone of his voice. It was ugly when he was japing, just like Mr Clegane's scars. "The beast must have taken the tape out when he was done."
"How would a beast deal with such refined technology?" the other man was not sure. "Tywin bought the best for his premises."
"I guess he could just break the finesse of the equipment with his tiny fists," Mr Baelish refuted all doubt.
"Enough about it," he said after a short pause. Shall we discuss further business, my friend?"
Friend? Sansa was appalled. If Mr Baelish wanted to help her, why was he talking to the man who kidnapped her? Maybe he doesn't know. She tried to find an excuse.
"Some other day, friend," her attacker spoke indifferently. "There is someone out there listening in front of the door."
The words were followed by angry steps and Sansa bolted. The other door she was leaning on gave in behind her back. She slid in and closed it behind her. The room was dim, but the last light of the evening came hanging from the window.
"Here, I think," her attacker was approaching. "... the closest place to hide." In a moment, they would open the door and then... She didn't want to face them or answer any questions. She looked around. A stack of photographs in minimalistic modern frames stood in the middle of the room. Birds, Sansa saw. The room was for the rest much like the one Mr Clegane and her were given. Outside, they were approaching the door. Without thinking, Sansa plunged in the wardrobe and helplessly tried to move the back side. After a minute of nervous fluttering something broke and twisted.
She saw it.
A passage.
A hallway into further darkness.
Sansa squeezed herself in. In her distress, she nearly forgot to closed the panel she broke behind her. But she didn't. Jon would be proud, she thought.
"Why is the wardrobe open?" she could hear Mr Baelish say.
"Don't know," the other voice sounded bored. "I would guess that the exhibition material was in it and they got them out but they didn't finish the job of hanging them just yet. Maybe I was wrong. My pardons, friend. There's no one here. Can we now discuss what will happen in six days when this party is over?"
"You know it as well as I do." Mr Baelish said. At least he didn't call her attacker friend any longer, but Sansa still trembled at his next words. "Dorne will be wiped out of the map of the world. It's so small and insignificant anyway."
The words sent her running down the passage she was in, into the unknown. It is about weapons, she thought, on the verge of crying. What kind of weapons do you need to do such a thing? Why would anyone do it?
It wasn't a corridor. It was a maze. The passage behind the closet led a little bit down from the level of the room on the second floor she was in and than it forked into two. She took one of the openings, and further down it split into three different ones. There was some light coming from the tiny rectangular slits on top of the walls. They could be hidden among stones covering the facade of the palace on the outside. It was not enough. The day was dying. She took out Sandor's phone, intent to use it as a source of the light.
The silence was absolute, and wherever she had gone, she was at least certain that she was alone, but for the pounding of her heart.
The smart phone shed artificial electronic light in front of Sansa's nervous hands. She would have never thought that the light of a mere screen could be so beautiful.
When her trembling subsided, her thoughts raced back and forth to details unimportant for their mission. A beast stalking me? It didn't take her long to undersand. Mr Clegane?
A missing video tape?
She looked at his phone with renewed interest, forgetting her predicament for the moment. It was wrong to violate someone's privacy, but she couldn't help herself. Expertly, she navigated to the phone settings as she said she would, but not to figure out how it worked; how the service could call him with instructions, or how he could track her if no one could track his phone. Instead, she searched for the media files. There was not a single photograph, of a girlfriend, or a mother, or a pet as most people were wont to have in their phones. There was only one file.
A video file.
Sansa shivered with completely different apprehension than moments ago. She was about to discover something about Mr Clegane and her fingers felt sweaty. She pressed the play button.
A very tall man with long black hair just like Mr Clegane's was turning his back on her, naked to his waist, pants lowered down to his ankles. His body was so large that it covered almost the entire screen. A weak cry came from behind him.
"Please, don't," the woman begged. "Please, please, please.."
A huge bare arm got up, and the cries were muffled. The man moved in a way that could not be mistaken for anything else but what it was.
Sansa was shocked and she dropped the phone. Her light disappeared in more than one way.
Mr Cleagane was not only a murderer. He was a rapist. Maybe... maybe his brother came to defend the poor woman and maybe that was how it happened. How he murdered him. Sansa squatted in the darkness. The floor was cold cement under her black cocktail dress but she didn't mind.
She began to cry. Moments passed and she couldn't stop wailing like a child.
Then, she remembered Jon. She remembered Arya. She remembered her father. You are a professional. You are a security expert in the field of computer technology. You are here to do the job. Mr Clegane works for Mr Varys. He wouldn't employ a monster. Your partner is ugly, but he didn't do anything to you. Not yet, the small voice whispered.
"Shut up," she said loudly at herself.
A professional would be able to look at the horrible video without crying. A professional would analyse it.
She took the phone bravely and replayed the horrible sequence. It was not long, the awful picture of the woman's suffering dissolved into nothingness only a few seconds after Sansa had dropped the phone. You are a professional. She wiped a tear and played it again. You wanted him to be good, you idiot, the other inner voice said. You want people around you to be good and to like you. They don't. People are like Ramsay, remember?
Her father was not like Ramsay. Neither was Jon. But they were not just any people. They wer her family.
She stubbornly played the video again, telling herself that if she saw it for the third time she'd be able to accept he sad truth about Mr Clegane.
It was then when she saw it when her nerves were at least partially under control. In those last few seconds where the woman's cries were muffled by her aggressor.
The imperceptible glitch, a change in settings, a slightly different colour, a shift in the image. She was not an expert in video technology to know how it has been done and with what purpose, but she knew a hacked image when she saw one. It was like phishing applications trying to look like real ones to steal your data. The video has been either completely faked or tampered with. She couldn't be sure. Some of her friends might be able to help her, but they were far away, across the ocean. Margaery, a lawyer, knew some people who could do that.
She replayed it again. The damn phone was advanced enough that she could zoom in the face of the man. Hair covered it completely, but she thought she could see a tiny piece of pale skin on his neck in the middle of the lank black curtain hiding his identity.
Unblemished. Whole. How far do Mr Clegane's scars reach? How old was he when he got them?
She had more questions than answers where she had thought she had just uncovered the most disgusting truth about her partner.
Sansa shared a look with three of her brothers. What if Mr Clegane shared a look with his brother? What if... ? She decided not to think any more. You are a professional.
First she needed to get out of the maze. She closed her eyes. She breathed in and she breathed out. In the total calm she imposed on herself with great effort, the plans of the palace surged in her consciousness. So that is why Mr Varys sent them... Did he know? How could he? The labyrinth must have been custom made with the palace For what purpose? The person in her closet came in mind and she understood the reasons. Our hosts mistrust all of us. Why?
You would mistrust your guests too, she told herself, if your home was about to be wiped out from the map...
Very slowly, she recounted her steps back to the starting point where she had entered the hidden bowels of the palace. Mentally, she superposed the plans of the second and the third level. She needed to go a bit back toward the imagined centre of the palace and than further down. Then, she could be able to land in one of those rooms next to the stairwell if they also contained open closets. She suspected that they might and it was the only thing she had to go with.
It took her almost two hours to get there.
The maze has proven more treacherous than she believed it at first. When she gave herself for lost, her nervousness returned. She collided with a solid wide wall in front of another bifurcation of paths, and realized it was made of wood. She pushed. Nothing. She tried to slide the barrier. Something, maybe. She slid it further applying both hands to draw the imagined door from the right to her left. It gave in.
As soon as it did, she could hear them. The woman didn't stop giggling from before. Well, maybe, a bit. She dived out of the maze among gowns and expensive suits, with a horrible smell of strong Armani perfume on one of them. The one that had been worn that evening. She dared a peek out. The outer door of the wardrobe hung half open anyway. That's what when she saw them.
Rounded Mrs Stokeworth was on all fours and Mr Stokeworth seemed quite busy trying to prove that god created men for the purpose of procreation. The door to a corridor leading to the safety of the room she shared with Mr Clegane was at hand. Sansa decided to run for it. And changed her mind.
The couple seemed immersed in what they are doing. They seemed to like it. Even if Mrs Stokeworth was rather ugly and Mr Stokeworth a much more handsome man. Stop prying, she told herself. They are adults. So are you, a little voice said and she snuffed it hard, not to listen to such nonsensical observations.
She crawled out of the wardrobe as a snake, careful not to make the open closet creak, clutching Mr Clegane's phone. It had been lighting her way every step in the darkness. She had switched it off entirely before attempting her final escape so that it wouldn't beep. At the door she rose as silently as she could. Then, abandoning the sneaking, she opened it faster than Arya, slammed it back and ran down the corridor toward the end of the wing.
She realized while running how lucky she was not to meet anyone both before and now... Sansa, stupid Sansa, she thought. This is not for you.
When she opened the door to their room, the only light came from the moon, grand and yellow like ripe cheese over the expanse of the garden.
Mr Clegane seemed at peace. He was snoring gently, Sansa found, for such a big man.
She thought back of the entire conversation between Mr Baelish and the man who attacked her, determined to share all details with Mr Clegane over breakfast. She was too much of a coward to wake him up now when her mind was in such turmoil about who he really was and what he did. She paced down the room until her breathing calmed down from all the unplanned exercise and discoveries.
When she was calm, she stretched. And sat on the bed because there was no other place to sit or lay down.
She stared at Mr Clegane's scars. He put on some kind of grey T-shirt for sleeping and his legs were covered by a thin sheet. The warmer blanket was tossed on the floor. He must have found it too warm. His scars clearly reached his neck, all the way down to the beginning of his shoulder.
How old were you when you got these? she wondered. And how am I to find out? Why are you hiding the video if you know it's not you? Or is it you and am I as stupid as some people think?
Young girls are fools, a twisted voice of her mother's friend buzzed ominously in her ears.
Maybe he was protecting his girlfriend if it's not him, Sansa tried to find an excuse. If proper experts got a hand at the tape to tear its content apart, most likely her face and parts of her body could become plain visible as well. Mr Clegane should know that, working for the service.
Her pyjama was on top of her suitcase and easy to find. Moments later, she carefully lowered herself on the empty part of the bed, pulling over a warmer blanket from the floor. It was better to let him and his sheet alone.
Too tired to think, she yawned. When she lay down, she remembered his last words to her before she had left that evening. He was worried about her, that much was clear.
It made her move several inches closer to him.
"Good night, Sandor," she said, still yawning.
Only the moon watched over them as they slept.
xx
A/N Thank you again to all who reviewed. It means a lot to the silly author. Thank you for reading.