Call me Out

[dammitmasa]

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code by cawaii
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Preferences:
- I don't play for shipping, fluff, or smut. If it arrives naturally, I'll play it. But not as a starting point.
- In universe, AUs, crossovers, post-game, or other situations are cool.
- I will play prose or brackets, but definitely prefer prose.

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[steeledskin]

"...I am certain we can spare someone."

She misread his signals, seeing appreciation where she deeply hoped to see it. Sansa thought Gendry was participating in her little game, praising her learning in as sly a way as she had offered to come to him.

[bullhorned]

He bowed his head. "Thank you, m'lady."

And so when he was led to the courtyard, he was allowed to go on his way. Having broke his fast before the meeting with his new liege lord, he had little reason to waste time with other things. He wouldn't idle away for her servant to come find him. Sums could come later. He'd gone through some of the supplies already, so he found steel as best as he could find and began the process of heating the force, so it could be melted and shaped. The Eyrie may have been cold, but the forge burned with a monstrous heat. But Gendry barely felt it.

He'd always liked the forge, even as a boy. It was here he had power. It was here he commanded the flames.

[steeledskin]

"You are playing with fire, sweet girl," Petyr spoke quietly. He always spoke so quietly, making others lean towards him in order to pick up on his words. But Sansa stood still. Her hearing was good; she could make out his meaning just fine over the rhythmic strike of the smith's hammer in the courtyard below. "But we learn our best lessons when we are burned."

She had left his chambers with fire on her mind. She feared it, certainly. Fire had eaten up her younger brothers, though the Greyjoy traitor had first fled those flames. The Hound had feared fire, too. And she had coincidentally heard that tale from Petyr, as well. She had witnessed the Hound's fear, he had come to her looking for a song and more. He had taken his kiss, and he had left.

Now, in a late hour of the afternoon, she ventured willingly into the forge's heat. She was dressed in pale blue and had worn a shawl over her head to protect her ears from the cold, but had soon realized that it wasn't necessary once she'd reached the narrow wooden canopy signalling the forge's entrance.

"It's hot," she observed -- a little lamely -- when she finally caught his eye. Before then, she'd let him work. And she had watched, fascinated.

[bullhorned]

The steel had not yet begun to sing. Even with cold winter air seeping in through the cracks, he'd abandoned his shirt so he could shovel more coal into the fire. It required more work than it had in Harenhal, back when the days were still warm. But the cold could never defeat flames. Only hinder them.

It surprised him to realize she was standing there. He'd expected a servant, not a lady. All at once, he felt self conscious to be exposing himself the way he was. But he felt sillier still when he considered covering himself.

"... it needs to be," he answered warily. He still feared reprise for any small slight. "Or I can't work the steel. Is there something the matter, m'lady?"

[steeledskin]

Her gaze remained on his face; she had drunk in her fill long before he'd noticed her, and she had been startled see him so at ease. Even after captivity, it was impossible not to see the benefits bestowed by his trade. Up until this very moment, Sansa had always assumed such physiques were the sole domain of knights and warriors.

She ought to look away. But somehow, looking away would draw even more attention to his naked torso. So she persisted in keeping her eyes locked with his.

"N-nothing." Her answer was not exactly informative, and she seemed a little stuck in place. "Nothing is wrong."

[bullhorned]

He did his best to maintain eye contact, but a life in Fleabottom made that difficult and his eyes soon fell to the ground. Submissive, as always.

"Is there something m'lady needs?"

Gendry could only guess what prompted her visit. He was not stupid enough to recognize she had some fondness for him. Indeed, he was growing very fond of her in turn. But he was not so stupid as to think...

She may call me Waters, but no one else has. It might all be a game still."

[steeledskin]

She could read and write better than any of her brothers, but she had always been hopeless with sums. Even still, she'd come to him under the promise that sums would be done. Given time and patience, she could work through them. If she had to, she could consult someone else. But if sums were what Gendry wanted, then she would have to impress him with sums.

Somehow.

"For now, I am the one who is at your service. The rest of the household is...engaged. But I gave you my word you would have help."

[bullhorned]

And there she left him startled. When he had requested assistance, he'd never expected it to be her. At best, she might have sent the maester to teach him enough to get by. This was quite another thing altogether.

"You? But--" Do as your told. Don't question things. "It it pleases you, m'lady. I'm sorry you must come out here to do this. The forge is no place for a lady."

Highborn or otherwise.

[steeledskin]

Now was not the time to tell him that even she had been on friendly terms with Winterfell's smith. Instead, she took the time to pull her shawl from her shoulders and fold it neatly over her arm.

"It was this or suffer Lord Robin's games all afternoon. I know which of the two I would prefer."

[bullhorned]

Suffer his games.

Gendry's expression betrayed what he thought of that. It didn't seem appropriate for a lady to be reproaching her liege lord in front of him. At least he knew better than to join in and get himself into trouble by agreeing with her.

"You seem to have a way with him."

[steeledskin]

"He lost his mother only recently." She could still remember the horror of watching Lysa thrown from her own Moon Door, and her complicit part in the cover-up surrounding her murder. Only now did it occur to her how dangerous it might be for Gendry to keep him here. She never feared for her own life; she felt a sly sort of power in the way Petyr provided for her. But anyone else was fair game. Robin himself was likely only still alive because Petyr did not expect him to live much longer.

"And Lord Baelish is...not his father, but his mother's second husband. He has little love for the boy."

Her implication was, of course, that it all fell to her: the lady of the house.

[bullhorned]

Gendry could hardly recall his mother's face. Indeed, only through his old master's description did he have any Idea who or what she was. But he could sympathize with such losses. He had no family now. Gendry never had any at all.

"You've become his family, though. He seems to need one."

He recalled a little girl who wanted a family after losing her old one. Perhaps if he'd been more like Alayne...

"You've a better heart than most, m'lady. High born or low."

[steeledskin]

"...Everyone needs family, even if they don't believe it."

When the snow falls and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. It had been a long time since Sansa had been part of a pack. She had been cut off from her family in King's Landing, and she had to make due with a false one in the Eyrie. But only recently had she come to appreciate what being a Stark had given her. Strength; belonging; a steadiness.

[bullhorned]

He merely nodded. "I wouldn't know. I've never had family."

There were the girls at the inn. He protected them, but they weren't family. They just were. Orphans and starving children, all in need of looking after. And now I'm here, where I can't do them any good at all.

[steeledskin]

"The smith you apprenticed with -- was he not like a father to you?"

Perhaps her assumption is a crass one, but it seemed as though stern master tradesmen were always behaving like fathers to one hero or another in the romantic tales of her youth.

[bullhorned]

"Fathers don't sell their sons."

[steeledskin]

"Why not? They sell their daughters."

Her argument bordered on insolence. Worse, it painted a darker picture than she intended. Eddard Stark had not sold her, per se. But who can deny his king when he asks for your daughter's future? Robert had wanted their houses joined, and so she was the currency exchanged to make that happen. She understood that, now that all her daydreams of golden haired children had turned into nightmares.

And then Joffrey had handed her off to the imp, again for political power. Now Petyr spoke in similar terms, mentioning Harry the Heir. Promising her Winterfell.

[bullhorned]

"That's not--" Gendry caught himself before saying anymore. In truth, he knew little of lords and ladies. They lived elevated lives and he always assumed they had their happy little marriages. Who could be miserable when luxury surrounded you.

"Only lords do that." It wasn't always true. But lowborn fathers who sold their daughters didn't do it for alliances or family names. They did it for gold. "And only to other lords. How bad can it be?"

[steeledskin]

Oh, how wholly she wanted to answer him. But even the long-ago lie of being a friend of Arya Stark's sister could not properly account for the truth she could have shared, telling him how the older Stark girl had been handed over to Joffery, then a prince. Mother tells me a king should never strike his lady.

"O-of course. You're right. A daughter should feel fortunate to be favoured by any lord," she fell back upon an old habit -- trilling back the words she thought he would want to hear.

[bullhorned]

Gendry was not one to stand around for conversation. As they spoke, he'd been tending the fire. Now he was shoveling another lump of coal to feed the fire. The fire flared up again and he set the shovel into the ground, leaning his hands over the top of it.

"You don't have to tell me lies." He wasn't angry, but there was some disappointment there. He'd come to count on her for being straight with him, even if reserved. She may still be in control of his fate, but it didn't make him any more receptive to being left out. "I may not read or talk like high borns, but I'm not stupid. What's it really like?"

[steeledskin]

Conversely, Sansa was one to stand still. There may have been a number of curious items she longer to touch: tongs and bars and counters. But she kept her distance from them all. She maintained her own few cubic feet of space.

She scrambled to blend honesty and dishonesty, trying to wrap the small truths up in big lies: "We came here from King's Landing. You know that. What you don't know, perhaps, is how my father..." Saved me. "He withdrew me from a bad betrothal. A poor business decision, on his part."

But she was still just a bastard daughter, wasn't she? "H-he was the son of a minor lord. The match was meant to...advance me. My sons and daughters would hold titles. But -- he wasn't very kind."

[bullhorned]

He had little trouble accepting that. It certainly spoke volumes of Lord Baelish, that he would step away from such a marriage for the sake of his daughter. In Gendry's eyes, it made him a good man.

"This lord... did he hurt you?"

[steeledskin]

"He never did. What was it you'd said about bloody noses in Flea Bottom?"

Sansa kept her gaze averted. She might have feared most of the men in her life, but she had also grown a better sense of which men would protect her if they realized she needed protecting. It was a kind of manipulation in and of itself. It was survival.

"The knights, saying hello and goodbye. The man who would have been my Lord Husband had very friendly knights. They so often said hello." Bloodied noses. Busted lips. She would not dare go so far as to let Gendry in on the depth of emotional pain this fake-Joffrey had caused.

[bullhorned]

His hands tightened around his shovel. He imagined these knights being the same as the Goldcloaks that came after him or the knights from Harnehal. Cruel men in iron suits who made no effort to pretend to be good men. They were butchers with titles.

How he'd like a chance to show them what real justice looked like. He liked to think they met some at the end of a noose. The Lady Stoneheart would have gladly strung up knights like that.

"Were they punished for it?"

[steeledskin]

"For it? No. But some of them were punished, in the end. For other sins."

She felt no shame in the delight Joffrey's death had brought her. Sansa wondered whether Gendry would react differently if he knew the truth -- that it was a king who had ordered the blows, and that disagreeing with him was tantamount to treason. She would not blame anyone for choosing the option which saved their own neck.

She may never have loved Tyrion, but he had at least spoken up for her. He had castigated the Kingsguard for their part in harming her, saying it was tantamount to treason in and of itself.