Fic: The Truth Will Not Set You Free
Jan. 20th, 2013 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kTitle: The Truth Will Not Set You Free
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Pairings: Sansa/Shae, Sansa/Tyrion, Shae/Tyrion
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2150
Summary: It was not a future Sansa could ever have foreseen for herself: spymaster of the dragon queen's court. Of course she would also not have seen herself wed to Tyrion Lannister, or bedded by a woman who'd been a harlot in the guise of a handmaiden when they'd first met.
Ser Barristan Selmy escorted Sansa to the queen.
Even after all this time men the armour of the kingsguard made Sansa nervous; a foolish fear, she told herself. The kingsguard had been the queensguard for some years now, Ser Barristan had never struck Sansa, and Queen Daenerys would never give that order.
"How is your lord husband, Lady Sansa?" Ser Barristan asked.
"The hand of the queen is well, Ser."
"And your-- lady companion?"
Sansa smiled at that. Ser Barristan had served the queen since before she crossed the Narrow Sea, and if Daenerys could have a paramour then Sansa could have a lady companion.
"Shae is well too, thank you for asking."
The knight knocked at the door to the queen's chamber, and announced, "Sansa Stark, the lady of whispers."
*
It was not a future Sansa could ever have foreseen for herself: spymaster of the dragon queen's court.
But she would also not have seen herself wed to Tyrion Lannister, or bedded by a woman who'd been a harlot in the guise of a handmaiden when they'd first met.
*
Shae's slap had stunned Sansa into silence.
She had expected Shae, her only friend and ally in the viper's nest that was King's Landing, to agree that Cersei marrying her off to the Imp was cruelty almost beyond endurance.
"...But what if he rapes me?"
"Stupid girl," Shae had said, not unkindly. She'd gripped Sansa's jaw and forced her chin up until their eyes met. "Tyrion is not going to rape you."
It had all come out then; Shae and Tyrion's relationship, and how Shae had come to be in Sansa's service. Even in King's Landing Sansa had rarely felt so stupid. She had suspected, at first, that Shae might be a spy sent by Cersei or Joffrey, but never that she was merely an unimportant hostage for Shae to hide behind, their friendship never more than... incidental.
"I should have guessed," Sansa had said, dully.
"Sansa--"
"You are a terrible handmaiden."
*
Sansa turned out to have a knack for spywork that she never would have guessed.
She watched and she listened, and she offered gold and the favour of the crown to others who watched and listened and reported back. She had the trick of picking patterns and meanings out of the noise.
And if, sometimes, she thought that it was not a Stark way to conduct herself, then she would remember Tyrion's words: "There is a reason why you are the last Stark standing, sweetling."
Among other things, she listened for whispers of another rebellion against Targaryen rule.
"Nothing?" said Daenerys.
"Nothing, Your Grace."
"Not even the Baratheons?"
"They believe that if anything should happen to you then your dragons would rampage through the kingdoms, burning indiscriminately."
The queen raised an eyebrow at that. "Where did they get an idea like that?"
Sansa smiled; it was her favourite kind of rumour to spread, the kind that may actually be true.
*
The wedding had felt like torture of a sort; even kneeling she was taller than Tyrion. Cersei had smirked like a cat devouring a nest of baby birds, and beneath her mask of mocking obedience even Shae had seemed angry.
And so Sansa had sworn her life to an angry, whoremongering, Lannister dwarf, and the fact that he did not wish to marry her either was of little comfort.
Then had come the bedding. The door had closed on Joffrey's obscene encouragements and Tyrion and Shae were having a fierce but whispered argument in the corner of the room, like parents trying to keep their fighting from an easily frightened child.
This, for some reason, was what drove Sansa from grief to anger. "I'm not a child!" she'd snapped.
And when Shae had declared that Sansa and Tyrion must pass the night in the same bed to make it look convincing but nothing was to happen, it had started to seem like a joke, and if it were a less cruel jape than Cersei had intended then it wasn't all that much kinder.
They lay three to the bed that night, and nothing happened except a good deal of sleeplessness.
The next morning Shae had cut her palm with Tyrion's dagger and smeared blood on the sheets; Tyrion took her hand and half-mockingly kissed it better.
Sansa had felt something that might have been jealousy, not because she wanted her Lannister husband, but because she envied two people who so clearly belonged to one another.
*
When Sansa returned to her chambers after meeting with the queen she found Tyrion and Shae in bed together.
Shae must not be feeling so lascivious as usual, for she did not call out for Sansa to join them, or perhaps Tyrion just had her well distracted.
"Sansa--" Tyrion called as she backed out of the room, her eyes averted even though it was a sight she'd seen many times before "--Ros left some papers for you on the table by the door."
*
It was Shae who had given Sansa the idea.
Well, it was Tyrion who had insisted that they all must find ways to make themselves indispensable to the dragon queen, but Shae was the inspiration.
Whores could go anywhere, they got close to powerful men, and to powerful women, and people were more concerned with guarding their purses than guarding their tongues around them.
Sansa had thought that Daenerys might be squeamish about her means of obtaining information, but the queen had only given a strange little smile and said, "Men like to talk about other men, when they are happy."
Sansa was squeamish about it, and there were a number of her regular informants who she could not look in the eye. Often she had to insist that the women told her only what they'd heard and not what they'd been doing when they heard it.
Shae found this endlessly amusing, given the things she and Sansa had done in the dark.
*
They never found out if Lord Tywin had discovered that there had been no bedding after the wedding, or if he was only eager for Tyrion to get a son on Sansa, but on his order there was to be a bedding now.
Sansa had been standing on the balcony, looking out across the water and thinking of Winterfell.
Shae had tried to be comforting, in a stilted, awkward way. "He is kinder than you think he is. And he will be gentle, or he will answer to me."
"It does not matter," Sansa had said flatly. "It is my duty as Lord Tyrion's wife."
There had been a long pause before Shae had said, "Fuck duty," and kissed Sansa.
"Wha--?" Sansa began, but Shae had already dropped to her knees, and was pushing up the hem of Sansa's heavy northern gown.
"Lean back against the balcony and lift one of your legs over my shoulder."
"Shae!"
"Trust me. I may have been a terrible handmaiden, but I'm an excellent whore."
*
Sansa rarely went to Tyrion's bed, although she had come to appreciate Tyrion's virtues and the pleasures that could be found with him.
"Do you and my lord hand not wish for children?" Daenerys had asked her once. The queen was fond of children, despite, or perhaps because she had none of her own.
In truth, Sansa did think of children. Often a son, tall like her with Tyrion's wit and intelligence, sometimes he'd transform into a dwarfish daughter. Right now she and Tyrion had the power and influence to protect such a child, but they knew as well as anybody in the kingdoms that power could be taken away as easily as it was granted.
Though their visits were few and far between Tyrion was lord of Casterly Rock now, and Sansa did wonder if he dreamed of passing it on to a child of his own. And considering Shae's former life, either she could not conceive or did not wish to.
It was one of the things they did not talk about in this strange, makeshift family they'd created.
*
When the Targaryen forces took King's Landing, Shae had wanted to run. Sansa had overheard her ordering Tyrion, "Get as much gold as you can, and I'll find Sansa."
"You want to take my wife with us when we run away together?"
"We are not going to leave her. She belongs with us, she is ours."
Sansa had pinched herself as a reminder that the warm feeling of belonging in her belly would be of no help if she were about to be fed to a dragon.
*
Tyrion looked shocked when Sansa came to him in tears. Shae never wept, Sansa did so only rarely and only in Shae's presence.
With the letter still held in her fist Sansa threw herself to her knees and cried on his shoulder. All these years listening to whispers from throughout the realm and beyond, she'd told herself that she had lost all hope, but she could never bring herself to stop listening.
It was why she had run to Tyrion and not Shae. If Shae had any siblings then she did not speak of them, and their absence did not seem to pain her; Tyrion had lost the brother he loved and the sister he hated in the Targaryen invasion.
"My lady--? Sansa?"
"My brother-- Oh, Tyrion. Rickon's alive."
*
In the end Tyrion had been right, you could not run from a dragon, you could only face her down and see whether or not she would burn you.
Sansa and Tyrion had been forced to wait outside the queen's audience chamber most of the day.
"I've heard them, you know," Sansa had said, "the queen's men, they call Starks and Lannisters usurpers still."
"You weren't even born when the Mad King died, and I was only a little boy--" Tyrion caught Sansa's quick sideways glance and added"--a littler boy."
That was one of the ways things had changed between them, not so long before Sansa would have avoided Tyrion's gaze, and he would have become angry about the things she hadn't said.
"If this dragon queen would kill us for something we could have had no part in only because of our names then we may as well get our heads chopped off quickly, because those who live will have bigger problems soon enough." Tyrion had laid his hand over Sansa's. "Where there's life there's hope, my lady."
*
The day before she departed for Winterfell Sansa and Shae watched the ships in the harbour.
Sansa had once said that the truth was always boring or horrible, later she'd discovered that some truths were interesting and horrible. Now, if it truly was Rickon...
"Which one are you sailing on?"
Sansa pointed it out. "You could come with me?"
"It is very cold up there, I hear."
"There are ways to keep warm in the North," said Sansa.
"There are ways to keep warm in King's Landing too."
"Shae," Sansa began, "if I don't come back--"
"Don't be so foolish. Of course you are coming back." Shae turned her back and refused to hear any more.
*
"She is testing you," Tyrion warned Sansa as he escorted her aboard the northbound ship, he was speaking of Daenerys. "She wants to see what you will do if your brother plans to march on King's Landing."
"I know."
"What will you do?"
"Pray that my brother has no plans to march on King's Landing." Sansa stooped and kissed Tyrion on the cheek. "Farewell, my lord."
*
It was truly Rickon. If the fact that he looked like nothing so much as Robb frozen in time hadn't assured her of that, the huge black direwolf that jumped up, put his paws on her shoulders and snuffled at her face would have.
Sansa needn't have feared Rickon's southron ambitions; he was a true Northman, as far as he was concerned everything south of the neck could sink into the sea.
Sansa walked amongst the Free Folk who'd followed Rickon to Winterfell, she sat in the godswood and shared memories with her brother until they were both weeping, she stood in the yard and caught snowflakes on her tongue.
She battled with the knowledge that this was no longer her place.
It was not just that Rickon would have no use for a spymaster; she missed the intrigues of court, she missed the queen and small council meetings that would go on into the night, she missed Tyrion's sharp tongue and Shae's deft hands.
*
Rickon had a wife, of a sort, a wildling girl who had stolen him at dagger point.
"Does that mean that you are wed?" she asked.
"After a fashion. Sansa, are you sure you will not stay?"
"I will visit, as often as I may. But I belong in King's Landing now." Sansa smiled fondly. "I too am wed, after a fashion."
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Pairings: Sansa/Shae, Sansa/Tyrion, Shae/Tyrion
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2150
Summary: It was not a future Sansa could ever have foreseen for herself: spymaster of the dragon queen's court. Of course she would also not have seen herself wed to Tyrion Lannister, or bedded by a woman who'd been a harlot in the guise of a handmaiden when they'd first met.
Ser Barristan Selmy escorted Sansa to the queen.
Even after all this time men the armour of the kingsguard made Sansa nervous; a foolish fear, she told herself. The kingsguard had been the queensguard for some years now, Ser Barristan had never struck Sansa, and Queen Daenerys would never give that order.
"How is your lord husband, Lady Sansa?" Ser Barristan asked.
"The hand of the queen is well, Ser."
"And your-- lady companion?"
Sansa smiled at that. Ser Barristan had served the queen since before she crossed the Narrow Sea, and if Daenerys could have a paramour then Sansa could have a lady companion.
"Shae is well too, thank you for asking."
The knight knocked at the door to the queen's chamber, and announced, "Sansa Stark, the lady of whispers."
*
It was not a future Sansa could ever have foreseen for herself: spymaster of the dragon queen's court.
But she would also not have seen herself wed to Tyrion Lannister, or bedded by a woman who'd been a harlot in the guise of a handmaiden when they'd first met.
*
Shae's slap had stunned Sansa into silence.
She had expected Shae, her only friend and ally in the viper's nest that was King's Landing, to agree that Cersei marrying her off to the Imp was cruelty almost beyond endurance.
"...But what if he rapes me?"
"Stupid girl," Shae had said, not unkindly. She'd gripped Sansa's jaw and forced her chin up until their eyes met. "Tyrion is not going to rape you."
It had all come out then; Shae and Tyrion's relationship, and how Shae had come to be in Sansa's service. Even in King's Landing Sansa had rarely felt so stupid. She had suspected, at first, that Shae might be a spy sent by Cersei or Joffrey, but never that she was merely an unimportant hostage for Shae to hide behind, their friendship never more than... incidental.
"I should have guessed," Sansa had said, dully.
"Sansa--"
"You are a terrible handmaiden."
*
Sansa turned out to have a knack for spywork that she never would have guessed.
She watched and she listened, and she offered gold and the favour of the crown to others who watched and listened and reported back. She had the trick of picking patterns and meanings out of the noise.
And if, sometimes, she thought that it was not a Stark way to conduct herself, then she would remember Tyrion's words: "There is a reason why you are the last Stark standing, sweetling."
Among other things, she listened for whispers of another rebellion against Targaryen rule.
"Nothing?" said Daenerys.
"Nothing, Your Grace."
"Not even the Baratheons?"
"They believe that if anything should happen to you then your dragons would rampage through the kingdoms, burning indiscriminately."
The queen raised an eyebrow at that. "Where did they get an idea like that?"
Sansa smiled; it was her favourite kind of rumour to spread, the kind that may actually be true.
*
The wedding had felt like torture of a sort; even kneeling she was taller than Tyrion. Cersei had smirked like a cat devouring a nest of baby birds, and beneath her mask of mocking obedience even Shae had seemed angry.
And so Sansa had sworn her life to an angry, whoremongering, Lannister dwarf, and the fact that he did not wish to marry her either was of little comfort.
Then had come the bedding. The door had closed on Joffrey's obscene encouragements and Tyrion and Shae were having a fierce but whispered argument in the corner of the room, like parents trying to keep their fighting from an easily frightened child.
This, for some reason, was what drove Sansa from grief to anger. "I'm not a child!" she'd snapped.
And when Shae had declared that Sansa and Tyrion must pass the night in the same bed to make it look convincing but nothing was to happen, it had started to seem like a joke, and if it were a less cruel jape than Cersei had intended then it wasn't all that much kinder.
They lay three to the bed that night, and nothing happened except a good deal of sleeplessness.
The next morning Shae had cut her palm with Tyrion's dagger and smeared blood on the sheets; Tyrion took her hand and half-mockingly kissed it better.
Sansa had felt something that might have been jealousy, not because she wanted her Lannister husband, but because she envied two people who so clearly belonged to one another.
*
When Sansa returned to her chambers after meeting with the queen she found Tyrion and Shae in bed together.
Shae must not be feeling so lascivious as usual, for she did not call out for Sansa to join them, or perhaps Tyrion just had her well distracted.
"Sansa--" Tyrion called as she backed out of the room, her eyes averted even though it was a sight she'd seen many times before "--Ros left some papers for you on the table by the door."
*
It was Shae who had given Sansa the idea.
Well, it was Tyrion who had insisted that they all must find ways to make themselves indispensable to the dragon queen, but Shae was the inspiration.
Whores could go anywhere, they got close to powerful men, and to powerful women, and people were more concerned with guarding their purses than guarding their tongues around them.
Sansa had thought that Daenerys might be squeamish about her means of obtaining information, but the queen had only given a strange little smile and said, "Men like to talk about other men, when they are happy."
Sansa was squeamish about it, and there were a number of her regular informants who she could not look in the eye. Often she had to insist that the women told her only what they'd heard and not what they'd been doing when they heard it.
Shae found this endlessly amusing, given the things she and Sansa had done in the dark.
*
They never found out if Lord Tywin had discovered that there had been no bedding after the wedding, or if he was only eager for Tyrion to get a son on Sansa, but on his order there was to be a bedding now.
Sansa had been standing on the balcony, looking out across the water and thinking of Winterfell.
Shae had tried to be comforting, in a stilted, awkward way. "He is kinder than you think he is. And he will be gentle, or he will answer to me."
"It does not matter," Sansa had said flatly. "It is my duty as Lord Tyrion's wife."
There had been a long pause before Shae had said, "Fuck duty," and kissed Sansa.
"Wha--?" Sansa began, but Shae had already dropped to her knees, and was pushing up the hem of Sansa's heavy northern gown.
"Lean back against the balcony and lift one of your legs over my shoulder."
"Shae!"
"Trust me. I may have been a terrible handmaiden, but I'm an excellent whore."
*
Sansa rarely went to Tyrion's bed, although she had come to appreciate Tyrion's virtues and the pleasures that could be found with him.
"Do you and my lord hand not wish for children?" Daenerys had asked her once. The queen was fond of children, despite, or perhaps because she had none of her own.
In truth, Sansa did think of children. Often a son, tall like her with Tyrion's wit and intelligence, sometimes he'd transform into a dwarfish daughter. Right now she and Tyrion had the power and influence to protect such a child, but they knew as well as anybody in the kingdoms that power could be taken away as easily as it was granted.
Though their visits were few and far between Tyrion was lord of Casterly Rock now, and Sansa did wonder if he dreamed of passing it on to a child of his own. And considering Shae's former life, either she could not conceive or did not wish to.
It was one of the things they did not talk about in this strange, makeshift family they'd created.
*
When the Targaryen forces took King's Landing, Shae had wanted to run. Sansa had overheard her ordering Tyrion, "Get as much gold as you can, and I'll find Sansa."
"You want to take my wife with us when we run away together?"
"We are not going to leave her. She belongs with us, she is ours."
Sansa had pinched herself as a reminder that the warm feeling of belonging in her belly would be of no help if she were about to be fed to a dragon.
*
Tyrion looked shocked when Sansa came to him in tears. Shae never wept, Sansa did so only rarely and only in Shae's presence.
With the letter still held in her fist Sansa threw herself to her knees and cried on his shoulder. All these years listening to whispers from throughout the realm and beyond, she'd told herself that she had lost all hope, but she could never bring herself to stop listening.
It was why she had run to Tyrion and not Shae. If Shae had any siblings then she did not speak of them, and their absence did not seem to pain her; Tyrion had lost the brother he loved and the sister he hated in the Targaryen invasion.
"My lady--? Sansa?"
"My brother-- Oh, Tyrion. Rickon's alive."
*
In the end Tyrion had been right, you could not run from a dragon, you could only face her down and see whether or not she would burn you.
Sansa and Tyrion had been forced to wait outside the queen's audience chamber most of the day.
"I've heard them, you know," Sansa had said, "the queen's men, they call Starks and Lannisters usurpers still."
"You weren't even born when the Mad King died, and I was only a little boy--" Tyrion caught Sansa's quick sideways glance and added"--a littler boy."
That was one of the ways things had changed between them, not so long before Sansa would have avoided Tyrion's gaze, and he would have become angry about the things she hadn't said.
"If this dragon queen would kill us for something we could have had no part in only because of our names then we may as well get our heads chopped off quickly, because those who live will have bigger problems soon enough." Tyrion had laid his hand over Sansa's. "Where there's life there's hope, my lady."
*
The day before she departed for Winterfell Sansa and Shae watched the ships in the harbour.
Sansa had once said that the truth was always boring or horrible, later she'd discovered that some truths were interesting and horrible. Now, if it truly was Rickon...
"Which one are you sailing on?"
Sansa pointed it out. "You could come with me?"
"It is very cold up there, I hear."
"There are ways to keep warm in the North," said Sansa.
"There are ways to keep warm in King's Landing too."
"Shae," Sansa began, "if I don't come back--"
"Don't be so foolish. Of course you are coming back." Shae turned her back and refused to hear any more.
*
"She is testing you," Tyrion warned Sansa as he escorted her aboard the northbound ship, he was speaking of Daenerys. "She wants to see what you will do if your brother plans to march on King's Landing."
"I know."
"What will you do?"
"Pray that my brother has no plans to march on King's Landing." Sansa stooped and kissed Tyrion on the cheek. "Farewell, my lord."
*
It was truly Rickon. If the fact that he looked like nothing so much as Robb frozen in time hadn't assured her of that, the huge black direwolf that jumped up, put his paws on her shoulders and snuffled at her face would have.
Sansa needn't have feared Rickon's southron ambitions; he was a true Northman, as far as he was concerned everything south of the neck could sink into the sea.
Sansa walked amongst the Free Folk who'd followed Rickon to Winterfell, she sat in the godswood and shared memories with her brother until they were both weeping, she stood in the yard and caught snowflakes on her tongue.
She battled with the knowledge that this was no longer her place.
It was not just that Rickon would have no use for a spymaster; she missed the intrigues of court, she missed the queen and small council meetings that would go on into the night, she missed Tyrion's sharp tongue and Shae's deft hands.
*
Rickon had a wife, of a sort, a wildling girl who had stolen him at dagger point.
"Does that mean that you are wed?" she asked.
"After a fashion. Sansa, are you sure you will not stay?"
"I will visit, as often as I may. But I belong in King's Landing now." Sansa smiled fondly. "I too am wed, after a fashion."