Sansa

Received 3:45 AM:  It's been three weeks since you took down LiaB and I'm starting to get genuinely concerned that you will never put it back up online for all of us to read.  What on earth could be so horrible in your life that you want to deny us such a wonderful story? Your words are brilliant and I hope you realize that you’re only hurting your fans by denying us the beauty in your words.  You're selfish for doing so, wolfgirl23, I hope you know that..

Received 10:23 AM: Every day I hold out hope that you'll decide to put Love is a Battlefield back up for all the world to see.  The only thing I can think of is that you have a publishing deal in the works.  I wish that you'd confirm that, though, so we know.  I'm sure many of us would buy the book if you simply *told* us that you were planning on doing that.  Basically disappearing from the Internet as a whole for three weeks after your massive over-reaction/flip out is ridiculous.

-

"You know," Margaery says, curling into Sansa's shoulder as Sansa glares through the twilight gloom at her email app on her phone.  She hates this, and she hates that she cannot, in good conscience, turn off the messaging feature on the forums website.  She has friends online, friends that she doesn’t want to lose over this stupid story and the apparent bomb that Sansa had set off in taking it down.  "I don't think I've ever met a more demanding, self-involved group of people in my life." Margaery reaches up, fingers closing around Sansa's phone and pushing it down to rest on Sansa's stomach.  "You don't owe them anything."

"I feel like I owe them more of an explanation than I gave them," Sansa mumbles dejectedly.  She hasn’t had anything more to say though, and the messages go long-unanswered.

This has become a familiar conversation over the past few weeks, as Margaery's presence in Sansa's apartment had become more and more frequent.  Margaery theoretically lives with a bunch of her cousins in a big house in one of King's Landing's oldest neighborhoods, but she’s hardly ever there.  She tells Sansa that she and her cousins are very close, they are impossibly noisy and Sansa suspects that Margaery appreciates the quiet of Sansa's apartment.  Exams are coming up and Margaery's in her fourth year, her thesis is due soon and she's been working on it in every spare moment she can scrape from her busy social and academic calendar. 

Even still, she’s found time to foster this… whatever that exists between them.  Sansa isn’t sure that they’re dating, or even if she wants them to be.  She likes Margaery, she likes kissing her and she loves how easily things come with her.  She’s everything Sansa’s probably ever wanted in a companion.  She understands the need for silence that Sansa feels, but knows when to break it just as easily. 

Theirs is an easy companionship.  They go out with Renly and Loras occasionally; they linger too late in the dark of doorways, kissing in the light of streetlamps.  Loras calls them ‘streetlight people’ for that reason, and Sansa’s so impossibly happy that she’s found someone who’s changed everything about her mundane university experience up to this point.  She wants this to be something.  She desperately wants to, but the conversation always turns, it always flits away before Sansa can find the courage to spit the words out.  She knows Margaery would say yes, it’s the asking that’s proving impossible.

"You could always take your father up on his offer and actually speak to his publisher friend..." Margaery suggests.  "Or ask Professor Lannister, I'm sure he knows people as well, if you don't want to use your father's name to get you a favor."

Sansa rolls her eyes at the mention of her Sexual History of Westeros professor.  "Yes, I'm just going to tell the biggest letch in all of King's Landing that I used his class as a springboard to write a story about two gay guys during the War of Five Kings.” Sighing, Sansa turns to set her phone on her bedside table. She leans over the side of the bed to retrieve her charger cord.  "He'd probably ask for details on the good bits," she adds once she’s upright again.

Margaery laughs then, throwing her head back on Sansa's pillow, her hair spilling out around her head like a halo of brown against stark white.  She’s so beautiful in that moment that Sansa’s breath catches and she finds herself staring, quite unable to look away from Margaery’s smiling face and the warm feeling that surges up within her as she looks at Margaery and catches herself thinking: I did that. I made her laugh like that.

Still, it’s probably not the best way to transition away from hysterical giggles, so Sansa pretends to pout; nudging Margaery in the side with her elbow.  It just makes Margaery laugh harder.  "Can you imagine?" Sansa adds.  She’s unable to resist it now that she’s got Margaery going.  She straightens, trying to look serious and putting on a poor imitation of Professor Lannister's Casterly Rock accent.  "Why, Miss Stark, I had no idea you were even interested in men after your unfortunate entanglement with my nephew.  Goodness knows, I would swear off men if I ever had to date him."

Giggling, Margaery nudges Sansa back.  Her eyebrows are furrowed together, when Sansa looks up at her face and her expression seems suddenly serious. "You don't have to say things like that, Sansa. I know that it can be hard..." Her lips turn down and her fingers gather in Sansa's thin nightshirt.  The nights have turned warm now and if Margaery wasn’t here, Sansa probably would forgo a shirt altogether. .  "To figure yourself out. I don't want you to rush into something just because you think it will make me happy."

Rolling onto her side, Sansa props herself up on her elbow and regards Margaery.  "I've already had that freak out, Marg."

"Oh yes, the Dornish girl from first year," Margaery sighs and pulls her hand back, running distracted fingers through her hair.  She seems uncomfortable with the way that the conversation’s turned, but she was the one who turned it.  As Arya would surely point out in such a situation, it’s her fault she’s uncomfortable and feeling awkward. "I just... I don't want you to say you're something that you're not."

"I'm not saying I am anything," Sansa replies, shaking her head at the thought that she was trying to box herself in for Margaery.  She would never willingly do something like that unless she was sure, damn sure.  And she’d thought Margaery knew that.  "But I'm pretty sure I'm not as keen on boys as I liked to tell myself at age seventeen."

"Men have two purposes," Margaery says.  Her elbow is up in the air, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on Sansa's ceiling through the shield of her fingers.  She looks like one of the great masterworks at the National Gallery, laid out like she's about to have a fainting spell.  Sansa wants to kiss her. "To keep up appearances and making babies, but with the way technology is advancing, I'm sure that their role in reproduction will be minimized soon enough."  She turns, a smile pulling at her lips. "You, darling, can be whomever you want to be.  But know that you're a good writer and you don't owe the Internet trolls anything."

They lapse into a silence for a few minutes, Margaery's fingers buried in Sansa's hair and Sansa's breathing slow, steady, coming in even pulls, her fingers curled up in the fabric of Margaery’s shirt.  She could fall asleep like this and a part of her wants to.  They haven’t slept together yet, but there’s been a lot of this: dozing on Sansa’s bed when they bother had other, pressing matters to attend to.  Neither of them, it seemed, wanted to let the other go.

"Did I tell you that Renly and Loras are opening for Dany Targaryen when she plays here?"  Margaery asks, apparently apropos of nothing.  She's braiding a few strands of Sansa's hair, distractedly humming to herself.  "He mentioned something about a surprise, too, are you going to the show?"

Sansa sighs, turning to stare up at the ceiling.  Margaery's fingers don't leave her hair, but she makes an annoyed noise at the back of her throat and adjusts herself so she can keep the braid going.  This is harder than Sansa had initially thought, and her confession is sort of a bad one.  She feels her ears start to burn as she tries to articulate her point.  She swallows. "This is really embarrassing."

"More embarrassing than nearly a hundred thousand words about my brother and his boyfriend?"

"Oh come on, Marg," Sansa grumbles, elbowing her in the side. She turns to meet curious brown eyes and adds, a little sheepishly. "And yes, way more embarrassing."

Margaery's fingers tangle in in the hair that she's braided, pulling the interlocking strands loose and leaning in.  She presses her lips against Sansa's cheek, sliding, almost messily, to land on the corner of Sansa's mouth.  "It cannot be that bad," she says, rising up on her elbow and kissing Sansa full on the mouth.

Time seems to stretch when they get like this, and gods, Sansa loves it.  This so much easier than it had ever been before.  Joffrey was only ever interested in how dating her made him look, and it had been hard for Sansa to reconcile that with her own wants from that doomed relationship.  Margaery is easy, she's steady.  She doesn't push Sansa and she respects (and thinks her love of rosenstag is hilarious) Sansa's creative endeavors.

"I've erm - never actually seen rosenstag perform," Sansa confesses when Margaery pulls away, her head dipping to press a kiss to the place where her jaw gave way into her ear.  "Outside of that karaoke when we first met."

Margaery stills, sits up.  She brushes her hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear with nimble fingers.  "Really?  That is embarrassing."

"Oh, come on, Marg, it isn't horrible, I just have never had a chance to see them," Sansa protests. She twists her fingers into her hair, tugging the braid that Margaery's put there halfway out before she realizes what she's doing. She smiles, just a little sheepishly up at Margaery, who moves to redo it.  Margaery loves to play with her hair, but Sansa’s never really been able to figure out why.  She’s told Sansa it’s because it’s red and it’s straight and it feels good.  Surely though, by now, Margaery must know that Sansa likes it when her hair’s played with.  It must be why she keeps doing it. "I am a starving student, after all."

"I'm sure," Margaery drawls in reply. Her cheek appears to hollow as she worries on the inside of her cheek, a habit that Sansa's noticed she has when she's thinking. She regards Sansa with solemn eyes for a moment before reaching forward and taking Sansa's hands in her own. "You must come with me then."  Her tone is so earnest that it’s almost alarming to Sansa.

Warily, Sansa lets her fingers twist around Margaery's. She is warm, almost hot to the touch, and her cheeks are flushed with excitement. "You have tickets?" She bites her lip. "Dany Targaryen is sort of a big deal."

"Loras is my brother," Margaery shrugs. "I'm pretty sure he could get me into the award shows if I asked nicely."

"Then..." Sansa feels the excitement coil at the pit of her stomach. "Yes. Yes I'll go."

-

Received 2:14 PM:  I haven't been paying much attention to this website recently, but I have noticed that you're getting a ton of flack for what is ultimately a very personal decision.  I respect you, do what you need to do.

Sansa's father calls her out of the blue when she's leaving her comparative political philosophy seminar.  Her phone is on silent, the only reason she'd even noticed him calling at all was because she'd gotten a text from Margaery in class and the professor (a truly terrifying and slightly creepy older guy who always stood too close and always looked a little too long at his favorites) wasn't the sort of guy who would let something like that fly.  She’d wanted to answer it under the desk, but the question had been complicated and after a few typo-laden false-starts, Sansa had decided to simply text Margaery back after class.

Now though, her father was calling and she’s distracted yet again.  Margaery is never going to get an answer to her question. 

"I have someone I want you to meet," Ned Stark says to her when Sansa answers his call.  "Can you come to my office?"

His office is up by the Red Keep, and Sansa hates walking up there.  It takes too long and on a rainy day like this, it's about the last thing that she wants to do.  Plus, she's wearing horrible shoes for it.  The streets up by the keep are still cobbled, to keep up the historical element of the area.

"I have horrible shoes on," Sansa replies.  "You'll have to wait for me to get the bus."

"That's fine, sweetie, I think we'll be busy for a while anyway," Her dad answers and Sansa lets him go after a quick goodbye.  She can't help but think that she knows exactly what this about and a knot of nervousness curls at the pit of her stomach just thinking about it.  She'd gotten brave, a few days ago, Margaery sitting on her sofa half-buried in thesis research but still smiling encouragingly as she texted her dad and asked if he knew any publishers. He'd said he'd look into it and Margaery had let out an excited shriek and tackled Sansa into a bear hug at Sansa’s explanation once she’d hung up the phone.

Sansa has been doing a lot of things that could be construed as brave recently.  She'd had a few drinks with Renly and Loras at another open mic night about a week and a half ago.  Loras had just gotten back from a botany conference in Highgarden and had shyly presented her with a beautiful little succulent houseplant that Margaery had started to coo over almost instantly.  "It'll do great in your kitchen window," she'd explained excitedly as Loras passed Sansa a handwritten care sheet. His handwriting was almost the complete opposite of Margaery’s, Sansa noticed, and curled where Margaery’s was mostly straight hard lines. "My grandmother has these all over her office!"

"Oh, it's from grandmother," Loras had clarified with a wink at Renly who’d raised two impressed eyebrows nearly to his hairline.  "Her big plant at home had a bunch of seedlings sprout so sent me home with some and specific instructions to 'Give that Stark Girl one.'" He'd shrugged.  "Guess you made an impression." He added to Sansa.

"I um…” Sansa faltered, not knowing if she maybe she had met the Tyrell matriarch at one point and was simply forgetting it. She’s pretty sure that she would remember meeting the Lady Tyrell. “I haven't even met her."

"Oh Marg…"  Loras had eyed his sister. "Did you do that gushing thing you do about people you like because grandmother lets you get away with it?"

Margaery had bit her lip sheepishly.  "No..."  she'd looked away, her cheeks coloring bright pink in the low light of the bar.  "Maybe." she'd added sheepishly and they'd all burst out laughing.

What goes unmentioned between all of them, as it usually does, is that Margaery's grandmother could very easily run the country if Renly's brother wasn't already doing such a spectacular job mucking it up.  There's talk of the Lannister faction calling for elections and they're all ignoring it because they don't want to think about it.  The government in King's Landing is balanced on a knife's edge as it is; unrest within the ruling party is certainly not what anyone wants.

She had been filled with bravado, and flattered at Loras' gift.  A drink later and the conversation had turned towards music and Sansa had blurted her secret.  Her fingers had curled around Margaery's under the table and she'd looked Renly Baratheon right in the eye and had informed him that she was the one who'd written that story that he and Loras liked so much.  The proud smile that had tugged at the corners of Margaery's lips had made it worth it, as had Loras' reaction.  Renly had been quiet at first, but later, after they'd all drunkenly sang a cover of some terrible pop group's one hit wonder, he'd confessed how grateful he was that she'd written the story at all.

"Not about the band, that's secondary, but about the idea of a relationship like that during that time," he'd explained, hands pressed together around a dewing beer.  "I was obsessed with the War of Five Kings when I was a kid, but even then I knew I was ... I won't say gay, because that came later, but different.  The idea of there being a story out there about people like me -- like us."

It was by far the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to Sansa about her writing and she'd been sorely tempted to hug Renly for his comment.  She hadn't, and had instead smiled a little tipsily at him and asked him what bits he'd liked best and if he thought it was weird that she'd written the story at all.

Now though, as she walks though the university's twists and turns towards the off-campus bus stop, Sansa cannot shake the feeling that something huge is about to happen  -  and she isn’t sure if it will be good or bad.  It flutters about in her heart like nervous energy and she can scarcely keep the smile from her face the entire bus ride up to the government district and the Red Keep.

They let her into the PM's office space with minimal fuss, she's been something of a regular fixture in her father’s office since she started at university some three years ago.  She nods to her father's secretary and slips through the door without asking to be seen in.  She doesn’t ever need to knock, her father had told her once upon a time, and if anyone made her to just go around them.  His door was always open to her. 

Inside the office, her father is sitting behind his imposing oak desk.  Across from him is a woman with deep red hair that Sansa doesn’t recognize. Beside her is Stannis Baratheon, writing in notes on whatever it is that they’re talking about onto a legal pad.

"Sansa!" Stannis says, getting to his feet and moving to shake her hand. Sansa is struck by the differences between all three of the Baratheon brothers: Robert who is loud and boisterous, Renly who positively oozes an excess of creative energy, and Stannis, who is far too serious.  A smile is pulling at the corners of his lips, though, and his whole face changes from a harassed-looking politician to a kindly, almost fatherly man. "It's lovely to see you again."

She smiles politely at him, shaking his hands and letting him get a good look at her.

"I think you grew again," he adds, eyeing her height next to his own.

"Impossible," Sansa jokes lamely. She's always been a little uncomfortable about her height, given that she’s so much taller than any of the girls she knows – not to mention more than just a handful of the girls.  "I stopped when I was fifteen."

"Nonsense," Her father calls from behind his desk.  He’s half hidden behind a paper that the red-haired woman has passed him now.  "You stopped when you were eighteen and not a minute before.  It's all that Tulley blood in you."

Sansa is taller than her mother by at least two inches and rolls her eyes at this comment.  She’s really the only one of her siblings that takes after her mother at all.  Arya is all Stark, as are Bran and Rickon.  Robb is a good mix, but he's got his own issues to deal with.  "Or it could be that grandfather was tall."

"Doesn't explain Arya." Her father grunts in reply, falling easily into the old Stark family joke.

Arya, who is all of five two, is an anomaly in their fairly average-height family.  "She's perfectly content to be short and angry about it until the end of her days, father.  We've established this."

Stannis and the unknown woman laugh, and it’s a strange sound from both of them.  They’d both seemed so very, very serious before.  Sansa gets a better look at her then, and she recognizes her from some appearances that Stannis has made in public.  Stannis' wife had died about two years ago of cancer, if Sansa recalls it correctly, and he’s made it very clear to the press that he and this woman were merely friends and coworkers.  She was a cultural minister of some sort, Sansa thinks. She never could keep all of those straight in her head.

"Oh, right.  Sansa, this is Melisandre - she wanted to hear about your story and maybe talk to you about publishing it."

"Really?"

"Well, I was going to call your mother’s friend Petyr, but she didn't think it was a good idea for you two to spend that much time together so..." Stannis winces and Sansa can see Melisandre's eyes go wide for a moment before they narrow.  Sansa thinks it’s the way that her father’s said it that makes the publisher’s eyes look suddenly so concerned but she honestly doesn’t blame him.  Avoiding Littlefinger had become something of a habit after she’d come of age, ad she’s grateful that her father seems to understand that.

"Littlefinger's publishing operation is small-time, I may have given up my position to work for the government, but my company is much larger than that.  Sansa, I would need to look at your work, but I'm sure it's sound or else I wouldn't have heard about it from more than just your father."

"Who?"

"Oh, I can't reveal my sources." Her painted red lips twitch up into a small smile.  She gets to her feet and pulls a card out from somewhere in her dress and passes it to Sansa.  "Give me a call when you're ready to talk about maybe signing a contract.."  She clasps Sansa's hand and adds a traditional blessing for those who follow the Lord of Light and Sansa, who has never been particularly religious, smiles and nods.

"She's always a bit intense," Ned Stark says when Melisandre disappears out the door to leave her alone with her father and Stannis.  "But she's heard of your story, Sansa.  Someone's told her about it and it wasn't me."  He nods to the business card clutched in Sansa's hand.  "I'd call her."

"I will."  It's a promise she knows she's going to keep.

"Now, what's this Stannis tells me about you spending a lot of time with Renly and the Tyrells?"  She frowns, she'd brought Margaery to Arya's tournament and that had been totally okay.  "Don't frown, Sansa, there's nothing wrong, it's just that you've been so alone since you started school, I wanted to say that I'm happy for you."

She brightens.  "Thanks dad."

-

Renly

"Is Dany really down for it?" Loras is excited, so excited that he's talking about a mile a minute to Brienne, who has a placating smile on her face but clearly is more interested in Renly's response.  They're standing in the middle of the stage that they're going to be preforming on come the weekend, sweaty and exhausted after a long practice.  "Because that's a lot to ask her - and it'll ruin her act."

Renly chuckles, scratching at his beard and winking at Brienne.  She rolls her eyes at him in response.  "The single is dropping tomorrow, Loras,” Renly says, “People will know by the weekend what's going on.  I figured we could end with it."

'It' is the song that Loras has spent the better part of the past month holed up in their apartment writing.  Loras is still hopeless on the banjo, and Renly's had to work more than usual, following Stannis and Robert around like a shadow.  He's watching and learning, but he knows that this really isn't for him. Not with the government going downhill as quickly as it's going right now.  There's talk of a call for elections, and that's the last thing Renly wants to deal with.

Truth be told, Renly was still reeling a bit for the revelation that the girl that he'd met when she was all of thirteen was the creative voice behind one of the best pieces of historical fiction he'd ever read.  Sansa had told them with Margaery leaning against her back one evening over drinks some three weeks ago.  She'd faltered, flushed as red as her hair, but the story had come out none the same.  Loras had hugged her and told her it was beautiful - Renly had held back.  He hadn't known how to tell her what exactly it had meant to him to read a such a well-researched story about queer people in a time when all historical readings seemed to indicate that such love was punishable by death.

Representation mattered, he remembered that from school, and now he thought he truly understood what that had meant.

"Do you think Sansa will like it?"  Loras asks, fidgeting with his keyboard and pressing a high C over and over again until Brienne reached over and swatted his hand away from the key.

She looked at them; close cropped hair sticking to her forehead after their practice under the lights.  "I'm sure she will, but I have to stress to you both, again, that I think it's a bad idea to create something based on a fan-work.  She could cry copyright violation.  The fans could revolt."

The last bit was said so lamely that they all threw back their heads and laughed.  They'd already posted some sneak peeks of the song on their website and there was already wild speculation that this song was the reason that Wolfgirl23 had taken down Love is a Battlefield.  Margaery had taken to sending daily emails with some of the more hilarious forums posts that she'd found to Loras, who shared them with the rest of them.

As far as they knew, though, Sansa had no idea about the song.  The backlash from her taking down the story and her subsequent realization as to who the members of rosenstag truly were had been enough (according to Margaery anyway) to keep her off of the message boards entirely.  If she had been on, she'd given no indication to Margaery that she'd heard any of the preview clips.

"I think she will," Renly agrees.  They'd asked Dany Targaryen to play the guitar for the song and to harmonize on the chorus.  She'd agreed to, as Loras was going to be doing the radio mix of her newest single - which was truly excellent on its own, but entirely too long for radio.  He adds, mostly for Brienne's benefit as she hadn't been there for the conversation between Loras and his sister. "Margaery said that her dad found her a publisher."

When Sansa had told them about her writing process for Love is a Battlefield, she'd explained that her younger sister and father had also read the story.  Renly had paled at that mention, for Ned Stark knew rosenstag's secret, but she'd gone on to say that she was giving him a version of the story that didn't include the obvious references to the stag and the rose.  "He was a little weirded out by the historical queer characters, but I told him that I'd gotten the idea in Professor Lannister's class on the Sexual History of Westeros and he seemed to... I dunno, get it after that."

Renly had suffered through Loras taking that class, so he understood, for the most part, why it had earned a smile and a nod from Ned Stark and nothing more. "But hey," Renly had said, biting back all of what he wanted to say to Sansa.  He'd wanted to thank her from the bottom of his heart, for creating something so beautiful.  He'd wanted to tell her to share it with the world because everyone who'd grown up like him needed a queer hero to look up to.  "You wrote something beautiful."

She'd flushed again, and had smiled at him.  Margaery had leaned forward to press a kiss to her cheek.  "I guess I did," she'd said.  "I guess I did."

Brienne's face lights up and pulls Renly from his thoughts.  "Really?" Even if she disapproves of the manner in which Love is a Battlefield was created, she does love the story.  "That's excellent news."

They run though the set list one more time, trying a few variations on cords in places.  They end with the new song, Loras fiddling with his keyboard until he can get it to play back the guitar that they don't have presently as Dany isn't even in King's Landing yet.

"I met you in a rose garden

caught by the sunlight in our hair.

One white rose you gave to Me

and the promise of eternity.

We were destined, you and I."