revivalproject | my tears are always frozen

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my tears are always frozen | calibration

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.

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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?

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."

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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.

"Lady did. She likes it better we're not on the ships because she can hunt and be in the wilds," Sansa says. "I missed her so terribly. I felt...my siblings and all had wolves. It's the sigil of our house, the symbol of what makes us strong."

The chewed on slippers make her smile. "She chews my slippers when she thinks I'm not paying enough attention to her. Perhaps I shouldn't let her do it but I don't have the heart to tell her no. I'll always give her the attention she never got to have."

"Your house, are there other houses?" He reaches up to touch the silver piece on his shoulder. "Fenrir has become a symbol for me."

Cloud gives a nod these memories are similar. "I never really had a pet, but I could see them getting upset as we do."

The next thing that catches his eye is the wooden throne. He nods over to it. "What about the throne?"

"There are Great Houses in Westeros, descended from the kings who were defeated by the Targaryens centuries before I was born. I have reclaimed our throne in the North," she says, pointing to the Throne of Winter and her crown. It feels strange to put the silver circlet atop her head once again but when she sits on the throne, she feels at home once again.

"I am Queen in the North. My people bled for others for far too long. We are independent and kneel to no man. I will never kneel. Never again. I have pride as a queen and I want to do right by my people. If those who lead us aren't willing to sacrifice, do they truly lead?"

The world she lived in almost seemed like a fairy tale. Cloud didn't know very many of them but he knew of one about a knight, princess and a dragon. He watches as she takes the throne. The words she speaks ring true when he looks around the room not one person is kneeling. He almost felt like one of her independent people.

Cloud's eyes focus back on Sansa as she finishes. He ponders over the question. "It's a difficult question to answer. I would want to say no, but I would want to believe that we're protected as a whole."

"It's the hope of everyone good, I think. I've seen too much evil in the world to believe that all people are inherently good but I think I've gotten better at discerning the good from the bad. I hope that I am one of the good ones, too, but I would hope that someone would tell me if I were failing."

It feels strange to be on her throne again so Sansa rises, standing again so she isn't looking up at Cloud. Her eyes fall upon her wedding gown.

"Thank you for not touching that one. Those memories are painful and I don't want to remember them. I wish I could have them burned from my mind."

"You do pick up on the evil once you've seen it enough." Cloud had seen plenty of evil things. People playing dirty with other lives. Being fully in control of them by creating mass panic. He knew that someone powerful enough could endanger others or kill their familiar by playing their cards right. He looks at Sansa thoughtfully. "I think some of us need that reminder of what path we're on."

The mention of the wedding dress brings him back into the room. They were here touching memories.

"You're welcome. I have some memories of my own that I wish to not remember." Cloud presses his lips together. He knows that his memories mean something to him. It's who he is and he'll continue to have them so he'll never have that particular fear again.

"Perhaps someday it's a story I can share. I've had it unwillingly shared through one of these calibrations before," Sansa explains. "And while the man who saw it was one of my dearest friends, it was still painful to relive it. There are things that may purify us as silver is purified in the crucible but they often aren't pleasant."

There is nothing pleasant about that wedding night or the year that followed. Still, she'd risen up as herself and become who she needed to be.

"I wish I knew more about you, though. You've the advantage of me now."

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

"If you want to share." Cloud wouldn't let her do if it made her that uncomfortable. He has plenty of memories he could keep buried.

He looks around at the items in the room. "I don't have to keep touching." But talking? He'll have to adjust a little.

"I don't mind sharing some of these memories. They have good things in them and sometimes remembering is nice. This time, it's easier. The first time I went through a calibration it was difficult to have people go through my mind and learn things I didn't want to tell them. I feel a little better about it now," she explains.

"Where do you come from, Cloud? You know a bit about the North and of Westeros but I don't know anything about where you come from and what it's like there. I'd like to learn."

"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."

He can't help but smile a little at that. Cloud understands that feeling quite well. "You'll soon realize that I'm not one for talking." His mind space though could be once he realizes he can trust them.

"I come from a backwater town called Nibelheim. Not so much out there but there's plenty of mountain trails. After I was old enjoy to join the Shinra army I did. I didn't want to work in the city like everyone else." He walks over towards the throne. "I come from a world that had a lot but lost a lot. It still has to be rebuilt."

( 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. )

"I can understand this. My kingdom has lost so much and bears the scars of it but we're working hard to rebuild it. Perhaps yours can rebuild too and one day you'll have people who think of your hardships as history and not reality."

When he talks of joining the army, Sansa's interest is piqued. "My brother Jon joined the Watch when he was younger. He wanted to be away from home and do something of worth. He was a soldier - is a soldier. He'll always have that part of him.

( 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.

"Nibelheim is gone to me, a hometown that has a lot of memories. Midgar took a giant hit and those that survived after that built a city past sectors 3 and 4. The new city name is Edge. But we're currently facing something else from the aftermath of what happened to Midgar. I'm Cloud gives a shrug though since he wants her to understand that a city was in fact rebuilt. It's still being rebuilt in other ways. Shinra needs a lot of support and it'll be hard for them to get that. The people wouldn't trust them as much as they would trust the people that saved the Planet.

"I joined so I could become a SOLDIER in the Shinra army. They're basically seen as heroes. It's what you read in papers. I never made it that far."

"We call them knights where I'm from. They get titles and some of them get lands," Sansa explains. "They compete in tourneys and fight in wars and some of them guard queens like me. They can become infamous, if they're talented enough and end up in the right place at the right time."

Sansa smiles just a bit. "Maybe we need someone like you here, then. I'm certainly not a fighter."

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?"

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my tears are always frozen | calibration

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Drawing please

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cw: sexual assault

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