Sansa ran through a misty thicket with Lady. The fog was heavy and growing heavier. There was a ghostly, beautiful singing behind them. In spite of the song's beauty, Sansa was afraid, and so was Lady. They were running away, toward a large figure at the end of the thicket, sitting all in darkness. The figure had huge hulking shoulders, and she could tell, just tell by the posture that the figure was powerful but sad, so very sad. She also knew that as intimidating and frightening as that figure was, there was safety with him; behind her only terror.
Lady's ears pricked up once she saw the figure at the end more clearly. Soon she outdistanced her mistress.
Sansa reached out, frantic as Lady disappeared ahead. "Lady!" She cried. "Lady! Come back! Don't leave me!" She sounded like a scared child.
The singing gained on her, the voice breathing cool air down her neck. The shadow of large hands encompassed her. Oddly enough, the voice itself was gone, replaced by harsh music, like from a pipe organ….
Her eyes flew open. She was in the boat-shaped bed. The canopy shaded her. The pipe organ music was not in her dream, but was blaring now outside her door.
She sat up and looked around her. She glanced at the ornate little clock situated on the nightstand. She'd slept almost ten hours.
She twisted around and gazed again at the painting behind her. She shuddered as she took in Lyanna's visage.
Everything came back to her in a flash.
A crash, chaos, a mirror, a twisted staircase, dark catacombs, Stranger, a lake, a boat.
A man.
Her stomach churned.
She compared the gilded beauty of the room she was in to the strident, dramatic music she heard outside.
Angel or devil, which was Rhaegar Targaryen?
Rhaegar Targaryen.
Very faintly, everything she'd ever heard about the man beat in her head as she slung her legs onto the floor. Fire seemed to follow him wherever he went. He was born as one of his family's homes burnt to the ground, the newborn and his parents just barely escaping with their lives. The boy soon proved to be brilliant, a musical prodigy. By the time he was eleven he claimed he had composed seven operas, twelve symphonies. Father a bit mad; his obsession with keeping the Targaryen bloodline pure led him to marry his own first cousin. Although Targaryens often married their third or fourth cousins, his union with Rhaella was considered scandalous.
However, he got what he wanted. His sons and daughter were born with the traditional Targaryen looks: silver-white hair, purple eyes, and great physical beauty (Rhaella died bringing the daughter into the world, some years after the scandal. Not much was known about the two youngest Targaryen children, secluded as they were in the Targaryen home, their father dying not long after their mother from a brain hemorrhage).
Aerys tried to disown his eldest son when Rhaegar moved his family out of the Targaryen mansion so he could teach singing at the opera and sell his music.
Rhaegar Targaryen. Aloof, bookish. A dutiful husband and father – until he met Lyanna.
Sansa shivered once again as she thought of her aunt. Did she truly love him, or did he pressure his pupil into the affair? Stories varied wildly. The Baratheon camp claimed the latter, while popular opinion whispered the former.
Most of all, Sansa remembered a picture she had seen of him once, in some sheet music he had written. She had gotten ahold of it in the attic, the music mixed in with the rest of Lyanna's possessions.
He was startlingly handsome. She couldn't make out his precise coloring, because of course the photograph was in black and white. But the long white mane she saw yesterday matched the one she'd seen in the picture….
She stood, looking around this her room. Blushing at the scant outfit she had on, she hurriedly wrapped herself in the dressing gown.
It fit her perfectly, and the cool silk felt wonderful against her skin.
The slippers fit her just as well, and she noticed a whole row of shoes in varying shades and styles near the bed. She walked to the closet. Dresses in her favorite colors were lined neatly inside.
Next she turned to the vanity. She picked up the hand mirror. Sansa's name was engraved on the back.
Beside the hand mirror she noticed a note, written in beautiful calligraphy.
My dearest Sansa –
You are my inspiration, my joy. Until now, I have lived in the darkest despair. Since hearing your voice, hope has risen in me and I glimpse happiness again. I am your slave.
You are in no peril, but you must never touch my mask. You will be free as long as your love for the spirit of Rhaegar overcomes your fear.
Rhaegar
Sansa was not yet nineteen. Sheltered as she'd been all her life within the walls of Winterfell Manor, what she knew of love and romance lived on the written page. Dashing counts, dark castles, thunderous skies and escapes through labyrinthine tunnels were what she thought of when she thought of love.
Sandor had opened new doors for her, taught her that polished manners and windswept confessions were not all there was to love.
But Sandor was not here. He was angry with her. He looked down on her for her fantasies and called them illusions.
She stared at the florid note in her hands.
She looked again at the palatial room she was in – underground, in the gothic catacombs of the King's Landing Opera House.
And her youth and romanticism began to carry her away.
Whether she acknowledged it or not, the core of her being, her soul would always belong to Sandor, as his did to her.
Yet she was able to almost forget this now. She thought not of Sandor's scarred face, frank and rough, but of the faded handsome one belonging to Rhaegar Targaryen, hidden in Winterfell's attic.
He'd taught her, cared for her from afar. He carried her away to an underground palace as she was clothed in a diaphanous gown. He confessed his love, his devotion, in language she'd only ever read of in her books.
He played music just outside this door.
Questions still remained, surely: how responsible was he for the atrocities above? The murders? Did he really think she was Lyanna incarnate, and was it she he loved, not Sansa?
However, these questions were very vague to her now; what mattered to the stunned singer was in front of her in the present.
What was in front of her was the most beautiful room she'd ever been in, built just for her by a handsome man with a voice so beautiful she wept with ecstasy to hear it.
She forgot the questions, the dream, the terror, and she felt infatuation take their place.
She'd yearned her whole life for a romance unlike anything she witnessed in Winterfell; she longed for what was in the pages of her novels. Here she had that chance, and who was she to reject it?
She shoved out everything else, Lyanna, Hollard, Joffrey, her parents – even – she swallowed, her eyes suddenly stinging – even Sandor.
Why couldn't she take a chance with her brilliant tutor, after all he'd done for her?
She glanced at the note again. You are in no peril, but you must never touch my mask.
Suddenly a fresh doubt seized her.
That mask. Why did he wear it? Oh, she could understand up above; on the off-chance someone saw him, he wouldn't want identification. Better that they should spread the false rumor the Phantom was a disfigured monster instead of the handsome man he was.
But if that were the case, why would he need it now? He'd already revealed his identity to her. He'd shown her his hair.
A harsh thought thudded in her heart.
Hair can be dyed, or a wig used. She thought she saw purple in his eyes, but had she really? Had she only seen what she'd wanted to see?
Was he really Rhaegar Targaryen?
Why else would he insist on keeping his face hidden?
Her new infatuation warred with her new misgiving.
The key changed in the music he was playing; now it was more lyrical, more edged with romance.
The note slid from her fingers.
She hurried to her vanity. She cringed when she saw her face. The makeup she'd worn in the show was all smeared now, big black blotches spreading from her eyes down her cheeks and up to her forehead. Her lips were edged in smudged red.
She spied what looked to be a small washroom and hurried inside, after grabbing a gown from the closet.
She emerged minutes later greatly refreshed. She'd brushed her hair with a pearl-handled hairbrush (again with her name engraved) until her locks fell thickly and silkily down her shoulders. She'd chosen a gown of the palest blue. All makeup was gone from her face, and while her complexion still looked too pasty for her liking after last night's ordeal, at least she didn't resemble some drunk clown anymore.
She hesitated before opening the bedroom door. He was still playing his pipe organ. The music was so sweeping now that somehow it gave her courage, brought back in a flood her feelings of romance.
She left her room and entered that odd drawing room.
He sat with his back to her at the organ, still playing. The music hurt her ears, but she was too transfixed staring at his back to pay that much mind.
How muscular that back is!
She shut her eyes to the nagging voice suddenly telling her that Sandor's was more muscular, broader –
No, he hated her now. Don't think about him.
The Phantom's hair was loose, hanging almost all the way down his back.
She lost herself gazing at the silver and white intertwined there. What dye could replicate such a color? What wig could look so natural yet inhuman all at once? He must be Rhaegar.
Just as she gratefully settled on this conviction, he stopped playing and turned around. He stood and bowed. "You are awake! I hope I did not disturb you. I have lived in solitude so long that I have forgotten I must adjust to another person in my home."
She was terribly moved by his words. His voice was rich with suppressed sorrow.
Finding her own voice with some difficulty, she said quietly, "You've forgotten nothing. I have every amenity in the world."
She wished she could see his expression, but the black mask precluded it. He merely bowed again, graciously.
She gasped as something velvety yet coarse brushed against her skirt.
"Oh, hello," she said in relief and some surprise as she recognized the culprit. An ugly old black cat with a torn ear meowed sulkily at her. She'd seen this ragged tom cat countless times about the theater, usually down around the stables. One of Arya's jobs was to chase him off, as he tended to spook the horses.
"Is he yours?" She asked Rhaegar.
His eyes followed out the cat as it nimbly escaped through the bars of the portcullis in the distance. "That is Balerion. He belonged to…he belonged to someone else."
Balerion. That sounded familiar. Bran had mentioned the name from one of his books, maybe. Something in connection with the extinct dragons? One of the old Targaryen dragon riders? Or one of the actual dragons?
What truly struck Sansa was how depressed Rhaegar's voice was as he named the cat. He sighed again and he stared downward. His fists were lightly clenched.
Sansa was suddenly very uncomfortable, but she found herself more drawn than ever to this tragic figure.
Clearing her throat, she said in hopes of taking his mind off whatever weighed on his soul, "What were you playing? I didn't recognize it."
"It was one of my own compositions," he said, glancing at the music.
Sansa took courage and approached, studying the sheets on the organ's music rack.
There was a title and a subtitle: The Prince That Was Promised, Or: Azor Ahai Reborn.
She frowned, confused. "Azor Ahai…." She whispered, wondering if she was even pronouncing the strange words correctly.
He was quite close to her, his breath cold on her neck. "I have pondered many years over which prophecy is correct: the prophecy of the prince, or the prophecy of the fire god, R'hllor. Or are they one and the same?"
Sansa turned to him. Again, she couldn't quite make out his eyes, but she could tell they were on her, studying her. Watchful. Waiting. As if expecting her to answer him.
"I don't understand," was all she could say.
He stared now at the sheet music, his voice faraway. "Since that terrible night, I have become obsessed with prophecy. Below this level is my library. It is immense. I have comprised it of my own collection before the Scandal's events imprisoned me here, and from other sources. Within the pages, I found it: a prophecy so old it cannot properly be dated back. It tells of a promised leader, a savior. He will save the world from darkness once a terrible winter comes. A bleeding star will herald his return….
"I sought out ancient books from Asshai. They spoke of the great red god, R'hllor – lord of light, lord of fire. Enemy to ice and darkness. He has but one true champion: Azor Ahai, who forged the sword Lightbringer and saved the world, millennia ago. The ancient scripture says he will return to save us…once again, from a terrible winter."
He stared at Sansa with penetrating intensity. "Can you imagine? Two prophecies, saying the same thing, from different cultures? How can that be sheer coincidence? These ancient prophets, they must have known something. Something true. And after the fire, I began thinking….
"Lightbringer was forged in fire, the fire of his beloved's breast. Your aunt, Sansa…she died in fire. The bleeding star….a chandelier is like a star, isn't it? And did it not land that day in blood, blood from its own crash as the flames destroyed everything I held dear? But the prince…where is the prince?"
Sansa couldn't speak.
He took her hand. He spoke in a low voice. "Your aunt was with child when she died, Sansa. Did you know that?"
Her breath caught in her throat. She shook her head wordlessly.
He seemed to speak now mostly to himself. "I couldn't understand it…there was the fire of R'hllor, of Lightbringer…there was the bleeding star…clearly our child was meant to be the prince! His absence drove me mad all these years!"
His eyes on Sansa again. "Then I heard your voice, Sansa. And it all became so clear."
Her heart quailed. "What do you mean?"
"Your aunt's voice was like none other I'd ever heard, and I fell in love with it. What I realize now was that the voice was not Lyanna's, not yours…it was Lightbringer, there in the voice! So of course Lyanna was Nissa Nissa…but no sword was meant to pierce her breast, for she held the sword within her. The voice, the sword, was to be a baby. The prince that was promised. Yet Lyanna died before the baby was two months old inside her! How was the baby to be born?"
He brought his hand up to Sansa's face, lightly touching her hair. "You, Sansa."
She felt struck by lightning. "Me?"
He nodded, and his voice was thick with tenderness. "Lyanna's death was needed to satisfy R'hllor. She was the foretold sacrifice to the red god. But you, your fate is safer. You are the giver of life to the world's champion. You are the queen to carry the prince that was promised to term."
He grasped her hands to his chest. "Your child and mine will be Azor Ahai reborn."
Sansa wrenched her hands away.
Mad. Mad. He was a madman, a dangerous deranged lunatic. Her heart beat loudly in her ears and she coiled away from him.
He was so lost in the fog of fiery dreams in his head that he didn't notice her repulsion or her fear. His eyes turned to the heavens, and then back to his music. "…And this, this is the song of ice and fire that will help bring him into the world."
He sat at the bench. "Listen, Sansa."
He played from the beginning.
Sansa flinched at first. The cacophony was more like an extended wail of horror than music.
Then, little by little, something happened.
Beauty emerged.
Not the beauty of angels, of the heavens. The beauty of ice and fire indeed, of every emotion, grand and terrible.
Feelings of such depth Sansa had never heard expressed through music before.
She was intoxicated all over again.
This handsome figure, trapped in a mask. Unknowable; saintly, almost. He could not be some mad fraud, this much she knew. If there was madness within him, it was of a divine nature.
Perhaps with enough care and kindness, he could be brought back to sanity. He just needed to know she accepted him. She needed to jar him from his fantasies.
How?
The mask….
"Sing, Sansa!" He stared at her so devotedly, she could tell.
But only if she could see his face reflect that devotion….
"Sing!"
She obeyed.
She stood behind him and sang the lyrics she saw in the sheet music. The words were in that ancient High Valyrian she didn't understand. However, she did not need to know the meaning of the words; the music itself said more than words ever could.
The music crescendoed into a craze of courage. She felt like her blood was on fire. Her nerves turned to steel.
Such courage made his mask look shameful in comparison.
Her hands twitched.
If he sees that I can look into his face and accept Rhaegar Targaryen, that will save him. It will erase the last barrier between us.
Her hands brushed against his collar but sprung back as he leaned into her touch, mistaking the gesture for a caress.
Her voice sharpened.
The music was under her skin, urging her, urging her. Don't be afraid, confront him, save him, save him.
She saw Lady running through the mist….
She tore the mask from his face.
Horror.
The music stopped.
His wail of outrage and grief was more harrowing than the opening notes of his opera.
Sansa heard herself scream, but she was too terrified to truly feel anything at first.
The face she saw was beyond a ruin. The fire had ravaged his face so much it resembled a stripped skull more than anything flesh and blood. His nose was gone, leaving in its place only two gaping holes. His lips were thin blackened lines, the teeth forever in a grimacing leer. The burns ended at the scalp, his hair untouched.
He was a true death's head.
The eyes were indeed Targaryen purple, shaded by a mockery of torn eyelids. The incongruous beauty of his eyes and hair in contrast to his ruined flesh made him look even ghastlier.
Speechless, she slid down the wall by the pipe organ.
He loomed over her, and he was growling like some half demon, half beast. He gnashed his teeth. His beautiful eyes blazed at her with frustrated passion.
He was suddenly crouching on his knees before her like a monkey, and his gloved hands twisted painfully in her hair. "Look! You wanted to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!"
His words were again theatrical, and again there was nothing ridiculous there. Instead they were only deeply tragic and haunting.
His laughter was high and he hopped on his crouched legs, a demon monkey indeed.
Sansa felt hot tears scald her face. "I didn't mean to hurt you!"
"Shut up!" He hissed, pointing a condemning finger at her. "Mad Sansa, who wanted to see my face! What, you think this is another mask? A mask behind the mask? Ha! Go ahead, see if it is! Go on! Try to rip this one away!"
"Oh, please, don't" –
He grabbed her hands and thrust them into his face.
In spite of herself she shuddered as her nails made contact with that dry, flaking, wrecked skin. "Forgive me…."
He stood, laughing drunkenly. "What do you know of forgiveness? You cry now. For me or for yourself?"
"For you! I'm so sorry!"
"Sorry?" He spat. "You don't know sorrow." He suddenly cowered as if in pain. He massaged his chest. "The close air down here, it makes me ill. Chest pains plague me. And you talk of forgiveness, of pity! Where was Baratheon's pity when he challenged me? Where was the Mountain's pity for me, or for Lyanna, that day he ruined our lives? They don't tell it like it happened. He, my faithful servant, he makes sure of that. The stage was the only space large enough to duel. When the fire spread, it separated Gregor and me on one side, near backstage, and the rest on the other, near the seats.
"The Mountain…he was mad if ever there was a madman. He tore off the leg of a table backstage and dipped it into the fire, turning it into a blazing torch. He pursued me. I'd lost my gun, you see, in the chaos. I ran for the cellars…he followed…as we neared the lake he cornered me. He thrust the torch right into my face, and I felt my skin melting away as he laughed, he laughed. I do not know what happened next. I must have found the lake and doused myself, too late to save my features, of course. I was fished out by…."
He trailed off, cradling his disfigured head. He muttered incoherently, then found the thread of his tale again.
"…I was taken here. I made a home. A miserable, awful, terrible home that is killing me. For over twenty years I have dwelled here, overseeing my domain when I go above in secret. Alone. So alone, Sansa. All that's kept me going is solving the riddle of the prophecies. They lent meaning to the Scandal, to the loss of everything I loved, to my face. But what of the prince, the prince? With you, I solve that riddle. With you I can lead a normal life, with a wife I can live with and take out at night when no one is around to judge us. We can raise our little savior in solitude."
He spoke in a sing-song child's voice, fiddling absently with the bottom thread of her skirt.
Sansa stared at the shattered illusion before her. Wrong, wrong, she was always wrong about everything.
She did pity him, she pitied him truly. Yet how could she save such a man? How could anyone save him? He was beyond reason. Perhaps…perhaps if he'd been honest and forthright from the beginning, hadn't hidden his face….
But he had. And he reacted with such terrifying madness. All at once she remembered the murders. As terrible as the tragedy which robbed him of everything was, he could have retained his humanity; instead, he gave into violence.
How could she ever love such a man as that? How could she fix him?
No one can fix anyone.
She remembered now a little boy. A little boy who was also pressed into fire by Gregor Clegane, much younger than the man here, who also felt his features melt away and was powerless to stop it.
The little boy became a broken, miserable man, but…sane. Honest. He was gruff and rude, but he protected her. He was angry when she turned away from him, but he took her at her word and left her alone. He did not force his attentions on her. He looked after her, but from a distance.
She was the worst wretch in the world. Here she's been concocting fantasies about Rhaegar Targaryen, who lived in a twisted fantasy and killed those who did not fit into it, and she'd turned away Sandor….
The true man of her dreams.
And so she made a fatal mistake. "Sandor…." She said weakly.
He gave another sharp animal cry. He had her by the hair again, screaming into her face. "Do not say that name! I only allowed Gregor Clegane's brother to remain under this roof because I knew, I knew when I saw him that the Mountain was responsible for his burns as well as mine! I felt a strange kinship with the brutish Hound. When I saw you lavish your affection on him, it killed me, pierced me somewhere vital, but I hoped it was a prelude of what was to come for you and me. I ended your dalliance, hoping he'd fade from your heart. Now you say his name, you vile girl!"
She thought of the strangled bodies and her heart was in her throat at the thought of him and Sandor – "No, no! You misunderstand me! What happened to you, it only reminded me of him! That's all!"
"Liar!" He hissed. "It matters not, however. You can never leave. A woman who has seen me as you have, she belongs to me forever." His eyes brightened with a revelation. He straightened. "Perhaps it is I who am Azor Ahai Reborn! And perhaps you, my dear," He pointed at her and snickered darkly. "Perhaps you are my Nissa Nissa. Shall I take one of the swords on the wall and set it ablaze, then plunge it into your heart? Shall I fulfill the prophecy that way, my good woman?"
Nausea swept her. "No," she whispered.
He was imperious and defiant. "The prophecy lies in your hands, Sansa Stark. If you accept my love and agree to stay with me, then obviously we are but the vessel of the true prince that was promised. We shall marry and live here. If you refuse, then that means you are Nissa Nissa, I Azor Ahai: and you must die at my sword. Well, madame, which is it? The love of a living corpse or death by that corpse's hands?"
Sansa's head swam. Suddenly a diplomatic turn of mind she did not realize she was capable of calmed her.
Raising herself to her knees before him, she said, "I want to stay with you, Rhaegar! I will bear the prince into this world! If ever I tremble before you, it won't be with fear, but with awe at your greatness!"
He is not the only one who can speak theatrically.
She was emboldened by his sigh of contentment, the softening in his bulging eyes.
"I have given you my word. I swear it. Now you must give me yours."
He was cagey. "What is it?"
"You will let me return to the world above. Briefly! Just briefly!"
He growled and gnashed his teeth again, so she hurried on. "My sister, my little sister. I'm resigned that I'll never see the rest of my family again, but because she's so near, I would hate not to have the chance to say goodbye! Don't worry, I won't tell her the truth. I'll simply tell her I'm going away somewhere, maybe back home. Then I'll return."
"You were faithless enough to take my mask, what makes you think I'll trust you now?"
Her fire matched his. "I am willing to sacrifice everything for you, for fate, and you won't grant me this?"
He would not be intimidated. "And what of Sandor Clegane? Would you see him again?"
She shook her head adamantly. "No, never. I'll avoid him. Just let me stay long enough to perform once more, then I'll come to you here. It will be my goodbye to King's Landing." She schooled her features into their gentlest and most appealing form. "Unless you want me to be miserable here."
She'd touched the child in him. "I will grant you your wish, Sansa Stark. But know that I will be watching you. I see everything that happens inside this opera's walls, and I will watch the Tyrell home, too. If I find out you've seen Clegane again, I will know you are Nissa Nissa and I will kill you right in front of him. I will not lose the woman I love to another Clegane! Do you understand?"
Sansa nodded, latching onto his words. Everything inside the opera's walls. Inside the walls. Inside.
A loophole formulated in her mind.
"I swear it."
She stood, facing him with all the wolf courage in her blood.
His skull-like face collapsed into tears as she looked him full in the face without a single shudder. He saw the honor in her blue eyes.
He fell to her feet and kissed her skirt, her slippers, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her legs.
She closed her eyes, thinking.
She hoped she would not dishonor her family name. She knew what she had to do, but still she faltered inside.
Sansa had never broken a promise before, and she prayed that breaking the one she just made would not bring even more ruin to King's Landing or those she loved.
A/N: I know Sansa might seem too flighty here with her sudden infatuation for Rhaegar at the beginning, but the way I figure it, one of Sansa's chief flaws is her ability to compartmentalize too quickly and her outsize romanticism. Since Sandor acts so distant now and she's still under the Angel's influence, I think this is a fair portrayal of how she'd feel. Deep down her heart belongs to that large grumpy doofus. Notice her supposed infatuation with Rhaegar doesn't last long, too! She has a real character awakening here.
In effect, I tried squeezing in her arc with Joffrey, only with Rhaegar (who despite everything that happens here remains more likable in this story than Joffrey, hopefully.)