my tears are always frozen | calibration

[theladyofwinterfell]

WHO: Sansa Stark
WHERE: tunnels
WHAT: Calibrations
WHEN: 3 June - 10 June
WARNINGS: Sansa's memories include sexual assault and torture. If you do not wish to play that, do not choose the wedding gown prompt. The others are free from this.



Sansa knows of calibrations. She'd hoped to never experience the horror of her mind being on display for others but here she is again, stripped bare to be seen once more. She's terrified of it. There are those who know her darkest secrets, the ones she tries to keep buried, but more and more each day she meets people who don't know. People who might pity her if they knew. People who would see her as less because they know what she is and that she's a ghost of a woman sometimes.

There's a wedding gown split in two and marred by bright, crimson blood. There's a hunting knife that seems too modern for this sitting room of stone and glass. There's a pair of silken slippers, chewed a bit on the heels. There's a drawing of a girl and a wolf half-finished, as if the artist were pulled away by something else and hadn't had the time to return.

As she walks through her mind once again, she takes in these differences. There's a carved wooden throne with the direwolves of House Stark, a silver crown laying in the seat. There's a scroll undone, the words just enough to make out. The final thing in this room of note is golden ring with a lion's head, a ring she's not had in years. She wishes she had it now.

Comments

wolves stick together?

[backoff]

The stone and glass of this room isn't what he had expected after visiting others. Cloud quietly looks around unsure of anything anymore. How often would this happen? He walks slowly over to the over to the first item that catches his eye.

It's the wedding gown but he doesn't touch it. He's simply looking it over keeping in mind how it looks exactly. The bride had been through something terrible with the bright, crimson blood staining the gown. Cloud takes a small step back before glancing over his shoulder at the other items nearby.

He turns walking over towards the drawing of the girl and wolf half-finished. His fingers carefully touch upon the edge of drawing. Who was the artist?

wolves run together

[theladyofwinterfell]

Sansa used to spend hours drawing in the Fleet while they were in Drift and there were no planets to visit. Even though Lady is alongside her just now in a deep sleep, this drawing isn't Lady as she is now. Space is cold and boring and it's best to keep busy.

Lady is smaller, just older than a pup in the drawing. Sansa herself is so young that she barely recognizes herself, barely recognizes the girl who went south to marry a prince and clawed her way back north to home.

"I see you've found my mind. I've done this before but this memory...this one is from not so long ago. This is from another place with ships that some of us came to this planet from."

[backoff]

It surprises Cloud in the beginning but hobbies come when the need is right. He's startled at the voice and he moves his hand away. Cloud clenches that hand in a fist at his side.

"Sorry." He knows that everyone will be venturing into places they might not want to go, including in his own mind. "This? You mean what's happening?"

He's been wanting to know about that. "You're not the first one to tell me you were some place before this one. What was your experience like at the other place?"

[theladyofwinterfell]

"Good and bad," Sansa admits. She won't paint it with bright paint and say that all was good but some of it, a lot of it, was worth having. It had been a place of safety when she'd come from one that had made it dangerous to be Sansa Stark.

"My name is Sansa. I'm a queen in a world that's very different than this one, a much older world. When I was in the Fleet, it was the first time I'd seen space or even travelled in the air. I was frightened at first but it became a home eventually."

[backoff]

"As all memories tend to be." Cloud quietly admits while slowly pointing over to the wedding gown. He's not going to pry it's a gesture of example.

"Cloud Strife. I come from a world recovering in ruin. I've been to space one time. It was very brief." He's not much for small talk but he does want to get to know the people the Agrii were bringing in and who he could potentially meet. "I ran a delivery service. I could make money that way too."

[theladyofwinterfell]

"Couriers can always make money. No matter what happens in the world, messages and goods have to go back and forth. Sometimes at a premium, depending on what they are."

Sansa remembers how happy she was when she did this drawing, how glad she'd been to have Lady by her side and not just a memory.

"I received Lady back when I was on the ship. She died when I was young, before, so I hadn't had my wolf in years and years. It felt like a part of me came home again."

[backoff]

"Travel became extremely tough for people after an incident happening with the Planet. I helped them out by mailing whatever they needed to places they couldn't get to because of the dangers."

Cloud listens to Sansa's tale of Lady back on the ship. A part of home coming back home to her.

"Did Lady come here with you?" He slowly drifts over to the silken slippers looking a bit closer at them.

Drawing please

[art_of_war]

Thrawn had seen many of these mental 'rooms', as it were, but this one was interesting in its difference from what he had explored thus far. He saw each of the items laid out but had little interest in the sundered gown, shoes, or the knife and scroll.

But he lingered on the drawing, examining it. It looked to be only a sketch, hastily made and curiously unfinished. But even with the roughened lines, he could see the greater detail paid to the wolf, it's slender paws, and the grace in its linework.

With one hand reaching down, the tips of his fingertips did not quite touch the paper it was rendered on

[theladyofwinterfell]

"You can touch that one if you want to," Sansa says, giving the man a smile. She hasn't met him before but he seems to be the same race as Altair and has the same blue complexion. Perhaps he is just as kind as the man who had helped bring her son into the world.

"It's a drawing of my wolf, Lady, and myself when I was younger. Lady is here with us, she's just not here. She's probably in the woods somewhere."

[art_of_war]

Thrawn said nothing but he did not touch the paper either. He was passingly familiar with the fauna of many planets, but in his experience, anything with 'wolf' in the name was mostly undomesticated.

"If it is unfinished then perhaps it should now be done again when you have the animal to use as a model."

Because it was apparent from the care given to the rendering of the wolf that it was held in much higher regard than the hasty lines, as yet unfinished, of Sansa herself.

[theladyofwinterfell]

"Luckily I have access to her whenever I want. Not here, they don't let her come to calibrations," Sansa says. Gods, but she misses Lady just now. Lady has ever been a comfort to her and she simply wants to bury her face in her fur for a little while to center herself.

"Wolves are the sigil of my house and they're very important to me. I'm not sure what I'd do without Lady. I lost her when I was a child but the Fleet, the place I was before? They returned her to me."

[art_of_war]

To Thrawn that was an interesting turn of phrase. It made him pause and look at Sansa.

"Then you have experienced this before?"

[theladyofwinterfell]

"I was in another place like this, yes. We were confined to the ships," Sansa says. "The fleet of them you see here? We never had one permanent planet but we visited them throughout the galaxy the way we're able to go to planets when there are storms on Temba."

[afterform]

( Vincent crosses another threshold into a room where an eerie comfort settles over him. The decor of gray stone and fogged glass beckons to Vincent like a familiar scent of solace. No memory comes to mind of what the solace is as he idly trespasses through the room, and he allows himself to feel it regardless of its source.

The slippers, the throne, these things take only some of his interest, but what calls to him the loudest is the gown asunder with crimson stains. He walks to the ruined fabric and towers over it with a heavy frown to his lips. The collar of his red cloak hides most of his face, but the discontent that shows is evident from the furrow to his brow. )

cw: sexual assault

[theladyofwinterfell]

( The gown is full of awful memories, painful trials completed in blood and pain. Sansa notices him standing there and she trembles a bit but she's prepared to tell the story.

It's easier to show than tell so she shows the horror of her wedding night, stripped of dignity and raped while one of her childhood friends was forced to watch. There's every night after for nigh upon a year where she went away from her body and drifted in her mind so she could disconnect herself from the pain and misery. There were times when she considered slitting her own throat to be away from it.

The day she escaped had been terrifying but necessary. The scars of Ramsay are both physical, still writ upon her skin from his knives, and mental. Her nightmares are lucid, the touches she wants are sometimes reminders of him. When she speaks, there's a tremble in her voice. )

If it's any consolation, I killed him. He suffered and while it didn't take as long as he had me, it was enough to know he lived his last moments terrified the way he terrified me. He made me nothing so I made him nothing.

Re: cw: sexual assault

[afterform]

( Soon the wedding dress fades from ruin and returns to its former construction. A redheaded girl wears the tailored threads. Her hair looks soft, brushed, fresh, and crafted into something he assumes took some time to shape, unlike his ebony locks, which are thick, long, and sprouted messily around his head from the red bandana he wears around his temple. The vision before him changes, and it's confirmation he doesn't need that the gown was indeed for her wedding, and he now watches the ceremony. These images, quick and necessary, are what he needs to know before darkness befalls the vision. She is in a room with two men, one was her husband, and another he does not know but understands to be a childhood friend of hers. Then the attack ensues with maleficence, he strips her, forces her, bends her, and marks her. Vincent wants to intervene and save her while bringing out the demons within him to dominate the violator.

Vincent watches her fade into a gray silhouette of the girl she once was. He watches the shadows trail at her feet and around her with a hunger she would not survive. He concludes her defeat with the substantial impression of suicidal contemplation. However, she shows him the revenge taken on her husband.

He turns to the woman when she speaks to him. His eyes trace over her face and fall to her lips as trepidation pursues her words. He made me nothing, so I made him nothing.. The last of her words were powerful enough to prey on his memories, and he feels empathy for her. She doesn't need his approval, she doesn't need his judgment, but he offers his appraisal of her actions with a strong nod toward her. )

Re: cw: sexual assault

[theladyofwinterfell]

( That quick nod is something that keeps Sansa from feeling ashamed of herself. Ramsay often made her feel filthy and ashamed even though she was still Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell and heir to the entire North. She was something by birth, not by decree of a bastard Lannister king, and she could take comfort in that.

She draws closer to the man who'd seen her memory, wanting to express her gratitude that he doesn't seem to be terrified of her or pity her. )

I am Queen now. Here, I am a mother. I like to think I've shoved that into a box far away in my mind but sometimes I remember it.

[afterform]

( His lips part at her mention of being a mother. He's momentarily shocked to be told that information and quickly works out the paradox of knowing a secret intimate-terror without knowing something more common such as her being a mother. The conclusion is he does not know her at all, outside this room, outside this memory. She should have the right to what she would share with him. This environment was not a circumstance in which she permitted his curiosity, let alone the resolution to his inquisitive intrusion within her dream. )

I apologize; I did not come here intentionally.

( He resists looking back to the gown. )

What we lock up will always remain. Waiting.

[theladyofwinterfell]

I know you didn't come here out of your own will. I'm more upset at our captors than anyone. I hate that memory and that time in my life for obvious reasons but it...it made me someone I needed to be.

( Sansa squeezes her eyes shut, trying not to dwell on it. You will die. Your house will die. Your words will die. There will be nothing of you left. She says it to herself over and over when she remembers this time in her life so she can push it back down. )

It's not your fault, though. My name is Sansa Stark.

[seeingscarlet]

It's always jarring to enter the physical manifestation of someone's mind that she already knows so well by sense alone. Wanda's never gone diving in Sansa's memories and she doesn't recognize this place, but it still feels strangely like home, like family.

Even with the awful specter of the ruined wedding dress in the corner. Wanda would kill the person responsible without a second thought, but there's nothing she can do about it now. Best to pretend she hadn't seen it and spare them both the pain.

Besides, she's sure Sansa knows by now that there's little Wanda wouldn't do to keep her safe.

So instead she drifts towards the throne and crown. "These are yours now?"

[theladyofwinterfell]

When Wanda drifts toward the Throne of Winter and her crown, Sansa nods, coming close to explain it and share the memory of her coronation with her. Every lord of the North had come to proclaim her Queen in the North and no one kneeled to her. The North will never kneel again.

"It does, yes. I am their Queen now and not just their Lady. It...both thrills me and terrifies me to have that much responsibility even though I've been running the castle and the North for years now."

[seeingscarlet]

"It was beautiful. And you were beautiful." That gown was clearly Sansa's handiwork, and although all of the weirdwood symbolism is completely lost on her, the trailing red leaves down Sansa's sleeve are definitely her favorite part of the dress (but of course they would be).

"From what I have seen it is the people uncomfortable with power that can be trusted. I know you'll do a good job and protect your people. You aren't like our government."

[theladyofwinterfell]

"Nor am I like the kings and queens I have known. I want to be kind but fair to my people. I want to serve justice when it must be served but show tenderness and mercy without a hardened heart."

Sansa presses her lips together, looking at the Throne of Winter again. "I am the first Queen in the North to rule. My brothers were kings but not for long. The old Kings in the North would never allow a woman to rule for them. Things are changing in Westeros."

[seeingscarlet]

"And for the better, I think. I don't need to be able to read them to see that those men are loyal to you." She smiles. "I was always proud of what you did after we all left the Fleet but I am glad I got to see it for myself. And I've always wondered what your home looks like."

She glances around the room. Of course that wasn't enough to let her out. Wanda hates this feeling of powerlessness - in the waking world, she'd never go poking around in Sansa's thoughts without permission. "Is there anything you want me to see? Or anything I shouldn't touch?"

[theladyofwinterfell]

"The wedding dress shows you what Ramsay did to me," Sansa says softly. "You can see it, if you want, but it's horrific. He made me nothing. He took my worth from me, any dignity I had."

Sansa takes a breath; it's still painful to speak about.

"So I made him nothing. I killed him."