Over the holidays I read quite a lot of AGOT fan fictions some of them intrigued me a lot, so I really wanted to write one of my own.
First I want to make clear that Sansa Stark is my favourite AGOT character in the show-verse as well as in the book-verse. So this story will ultimately be all about good things happening to Sansa. Yet, I haven't decided how many chapters this story will have.
This story begins after the events of S8
For this chapter particular I'm playing a bit around with the Telltale Game of Thrones lore.
Warning: This chapter contains mentions of sexual abuse/violence, implied rape and miscarriage in one scene.
Lys, Harbour district, shortly after the coronation of King Bran the broken
The air of the early morning was brisk and smelled of the sea, the tide was coming soon. The house was small and was well past it's prime, most people that would walk past it wouldn't even be able to tell it apart from the warehouse next to it. A dozen cloaked and hooded men walked through narrow streets, avoiding overly curious glances from the fishermen that prepared their vessels. Most of the men positioned themself around the house and warehouse, making sure nobody would be able to escape unseen.
Three men kept standing in front of the main door, the smallest among them used a small dagger and his nimble fingers to silently pick the lock of the door. They looked around making sure nobody had actually seen them, they entered the house. After closing the door again, the men lit two candles and searched for the inhabitants of the house. Silently they moved through the house until they found a bedroom upstairs, in the bed lay a man in his late thirties, next to him a woman of the same age.
As a few more candle were lit in the room, the man stirred awake, a scream of shock and terror was stuck in his throat as he found himself at the receiving end of a sword pressed against his throat. The woman also woke up and looked in panic at the scene around her. Her dark skin and hair in combination with the iron collar around her neck heavily implied that she was a slave. The woman dared no to speak or move as she saw three armed figures around the bed.
"Are you Rickard Morgyn?" asked the man with the sword.
"Who are you?" responded the man his voice still hindered by fear.
"A loyal banner man of House Manderly and House Stark. And now answer the question." Said the man with ice in his voice.
"I... I... " he just stammered, the tallest of the men cleared his throat and gave the man with the sword a look.
"Right, right we are not here to waste time" said the man with the sword to himself, "Bedwyr take care of him, I'll talk with the woman."
The tall man nodded, grabbed Rickard's foot and yanked him out of the bed, quickly he put a piece of cloth in his mouth and bound his hands behind his back. In the meantime, the man with the sword talked to the slave woman.
"Do you understand me?" he asked, his lyanese tongue thick with a westerosi accent.
"Yes." whispered the woman.
"Good. Do you know of a westerosi woman that is also in this house?"
She glanced at her owner lying on the ground bound and gagged. "Yes," she hesitated for a moment and a a few gathered in her eyes, "in the cellar."
The man raised an eyebrow, "we didn't find a cellar."
"It's under the warehouse, you can only enter it through the warehouse."
The man nodded, "show me the way"
Again she hesitated and then started to walk out of the room. The man with the sword followed the woman before he left the room he looked at the third man who hadn't said a word yet, "Ewing, search his belongings, maybe we'll find something useful."
The man nodded and immediately started with his task, the man with the sword continued to follow the slave woman. Knowing the way, she led him downstairs again into a small storage room with an old, but heavy oak door on the other side of the room. She pulled the door open with surprising ease and walked into the warehouse. Inside the warehouse he was hit by the smell of moulding wood and days old fish. Pulling a piece of his cloak over his nose and mouth he followed her to a floor hatch towards the front of the warehouse, she pulled on a rope and the hatch opened, he followed the rope with his eyes and noticed, that the hatch was opened by a pulley with a counterweight.
While the moonlight had given some additional light on the way towards the cellar, now his torch was the only source of light. Carefully the walked down the steep stairs, when they reached the bottom of the stairs he paused for a moment to take a few deep breaths. He took at look at his surroundings; the cellar looked much older than the warehouse and seemed like it was once used for storing barrels of wine, ale and liquors.
"What were your duties here?" He asked the slave woman.
Ashamed she looked at the ground, "to give the master pleasure," she looked further down the cellar, "also to feed and sometimes clean her."
"Feed and clean who?" he asked.
Tears gathered in the woman's eyes, "the master's wife.
He nodded and gave her a sign to continue their walk. They only had to take a few more steps until the reached a singular cell, it looked like had been a normal storage area once that had been refitted into a cell just by adding iron bars on the open side. The woman quickly took the key which hung on the wall and opened the door to the cell, despite the door being opened no sound or movement came from inside the cell. He took a closer look inside the sparsely furnished cell. There was a pile of old straw in one corner and a wooden bucket that smelled absolutely awful in another corner.
It took him a few moments to recognise the curled up body on the pile of straw. He quickly walked into the cell and took a closer look at the body; it was a girl and roughly fit the description he had been given, even though she was rather dirty and much too thin, but he was sure he had found Mira Forrester. He tried waking her up by gently shaking her shoulder, but no reaction came from her, he shook her again with a bit more force, but again barely any reaction came from her. Slowly, her eyes opened, but her gaze was distant and apathetic; her behaviour reminded him of someone under the influence of Milk of the Poppy. He looked sternly at the slave woman.
"Has Milk of the Poppy been given to her?"
The woman shook her head, "no, but she has not been well since that day."
"What happened?" he asked, his tone getting harsher.
More tears fell from the woman's eyes. "The master had forced her into his bed multiple times, forcefully. Eventually, she became pregnant with his child, but the circumstances made it impossible for her to love the child. She stopped eating and lost the bit of hope that had remained in her; she fell sick and lost the child. I think she wants to die."
"By the Gods, it's worse than I thought." he gave the slave woman the torch and picked up Mira, he wasn't the strongest but the young woman had barely any weight.
"Follow me quickly," he said without looking at the woman and hurried back towards his men.
When he reached his men, he saw that they had already moved Morgyn down towards the main door, his hands were bound with a thick rope and he was gagged with a piece of cloth. Morgyn's eyes widened in shook when he saw that the man who had threatened his life earlier was now carrying Mira Forrester over his shoulder.
The cloaked man carefully handed Mira Forrester over to the tall man, Bedwyr. "Bring her to the ship, quickly."
He nodded and immediately left, carrying Mira Forrester. The cloaked man looked at the smaller man. "Did you find anything of interest or useful, Ewing?"
The man grinned and pulled a pouch from under his cloak, "found a few documents that might be of great interest for the bailiff;" he also pulled out a small iron key, "I guess this could be used to lock or unlock a slave collar."
"Good job, take him also to the ship and take the other men with you."
Ewing nodded and grabbed a black wool bag from his belt, pulled it over Morgyn's head and roughly pushed him out onto the street. The cloaked man moved behind the slave woman and used the key that had been given to him to unlock her slave collar, he handed her a small but heavy purse. "You're free now, forget what happened here and never say a word to anyone about this."
He left the house before the woman could thank him properly and hurried back towards the ship. A sigh of relief left his mouth when he finally had reached the ship and saw all of his men including Bedwyr and Ewing on board. He quickly jumped onto the ship and walked towards the captain, a small, stout man from the iron islands with a short beard and messy salt and pepper hair, who was already waiting for him next to the steering wheel.
"All a board," he said panting, "leave the harbour as soon as we can and sat sail for Whiteharbour."
"Aye," said the captain and started giving orders to his men.
So this concludes the first chapter of this story, let me know what you think.