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witticasterThis is not the thing I need to get done, but I'm hoping that, by finishing this, I'll be revved to finish that. I AM WORKING ON IT, I SWEAR. I didn't realize it was going to take this much out of me to get myself to write it, I don't even know what's going on with me. D: So, uh.
Final version of my 10 songs Mya/Sansa fic, ooh. Just in case you wanted the meme one more time--
Of course, I cheated and edited and rearranged and so on. Fuck you, I do what I want &cet. The song list in this case (since several of them are lesser-known covers) is:
1. "Peggy-O" by Simon & Garfunkel
2. "You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will." by Bright Eyes
3. "Sh-Boom" by The Crew-Cuts
4. "Beautiful" by Carole King
5. "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" by Lucy Kaplansky
6. "David's Lamentation" by the Paul Hillier Singers
7. "A Case of You" by k.d. lang
8. "You Make It Seem Like Nothing" by Elliott Smith
9. "August" by Tim Janis
10. "On A Day Like This" by Elbow
Peggy-O
They ramble over paths outside as well as within the halls of the castle; Mya knows the land as she knows the lines in her callused palms, even iced over as it is now. Her eyes are sharp, her footing sure. When necessary, her grip on Alayne's forearm is firm, until Alayne's footing begins to feel certain, too.
It is freezing out, far colder than all the summer years that stretch back in Alayne's memory, but the frigid edge in the air makes all her senses feel sharper. And Mya's presence at her side, occasionally pointing out something interesting on their path, makes their sojourns all the more pleasant. This, she thinks, is what having a sister could have been like: walking arm in arm, together braced against the wind.
You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.
Mya always seems to find Alayne when she feels like she is going to scream and break into far too many pieces. She's not...comforting, exactly, not in the way that Alayne is used to thinking of comforting, but she's--not Littlefinger, with his lingering gazes and kisses hello. And Mya's voice is always brisk and always the same.
Let's go walking, she says. And the undercurrent is Let's forget this for now, whatever it is.
They visit the mules. Mya never asks, and most of the time, Alayne doesn't tell. And yet, when they're together, it no longer matters. Whatever it is.
Sh-Boom
"No, it goes like this," Alayne says, laughing. And she hums the melody again, of a song that she remembers from a childhood she pretends away. It lilts in the air between them, if a bit shakily.
"I can't sing," Mya complains. "The mules're going to start complaining if I try it again."
"You can do it." Alayne leans in a little. Her skirts must be picking up all sorts of dust from the great pile of hay they've claimed for their own, she suddenly realizes, but she doesn't care at all this afternoon. "With me?"
Mya can't do it, and they both know it--she knows more drinking songs than Alayne was aware existed, and can burst out with an off key rendition of a couple of verses of each of them, but not this kind of singing, the sort that well-bred girls are taught. They sing it together anyway, dissolving into giggles and snickering that only the beasts are present to witness.
Beautiful
Mya keeps her own counsel most of the time, but her displeasure inevitably makes itself known when it's present. The silences in passing make Alayne's stomach feel like it's knotting itself up--on the rare occasions they do pass each other. Her friend can also vanish into the recesses of the castle when she likes, too, and she has years of life there aiding her disappearances.
Alayne isn't sure what to do about it, now that Mya is angry with her. Especially when Alayne is angry, too, still--much as she wishes she wasn't. The days are far longer with Lady Myranda and Sweetrobin as her most constant companions.
Invitations go unanswered, and one night, she realizes as she slips into bed that if anything is going to change, she will have to visit the stables and find the mules' caretaker (who, it turns out, is the stubbornest of them all) herself.
(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding
They stare at each other, hard. Mya's eyes are brilliantly blue and stormy, and Alayne imagines hers are hardly kinder--but she can't bear any more stiff rebukes (from her) and sharp-tongued commentary (from Mya).
She looks down at the stone floor, with cracks running beneath her feet, and up once more at Mya. A silent sigh, and she apologizes.
"You took the words out of my mouth," Mya grumbles affably later, when they are lying with their heads together on the mules' dinner. There's straw in their hair, and occasional furtive glances for anyone listening. "You looked so furious, standing there, and I didn't want but to tell you I was wrong."
David's Lamentation
Alayne is not sorry that Robert Arryn is dead.
She wishes she could pretend otherwise, but it takes enough energy to playact mourning when she's in public. Doing so in her private thoughts would exhaust her.
The day after he's laid to rest, she breaks her fast late in the morning. Mya answers her invitation to join her; they swallow the bland remnants of the harvest while carefully speaking of every subject but young Sweetrobin.
A Case of You
She doesn't know what she's doing.
She is suddenly Sansa again, and her wedding night was an unmitigated disaster, without the touch she had scarcely dared to imagine in private fancies long ago. Mya has done this before, though--even if she had said once, looking out a window over the sprawling expanse of snow, that she'd never tried kissing anyone but men (and mostly Mychel Redfort) before she'd met Alayne.
But it's warm in Alayne's chambers, the dimness of candlelight and the radiating heat of the fire flickering licks of colour into her room and setting shadows dancing at the edges of their reach. The door is barred, Robin is dead and gone, and she almost feels secure--and Mya's mouth is too welcoming to worry on anything more than her inexperience.
They've somehow ended up on the floor in front of the hearth, Mya kissing her neck while her fingers wander, Alayne tentatively drawing open Mya's leathers, and it almost feels as though she is getting a second chance. If only there were cloaks to lay on each others' shoulders.
You Make It Seem Like Nothing
They both know that Mya cannot stay, even as they lay in Alayne's bed together. The leaving will be complicated enough, given the hour, though women's late-night confidences are not so questionable as they might be: imagine if Mya had been a man, Alayne tells herself, and if Littlefinger heard of it.
But even if Alayne was unconcerned with others--Littlefinger, specifically, for no one else holds such sway over her--noticing Mya's presence, she has mules to tend to. A late retreat to her own quarters seems the best plan action.
If only it could be delayed somehow--if only they could remain as they are forever, or at least a little longer. Alayne laces her fingers with Mya's under the heavy covers, the warmth of another body against hers still novel and exciting. Curled together in the deep shadows of a room lit only by embers, she wants nothing more in the world.
August
It is years before the spring comes, but when it does, Sansa does not know if she can trust her eyes. First come tiny white flowers, only just breaking the surface of the slowly-melting snow; they can throw snowballs with one hand while proffering fistfuls of blossoms with the other. Then, tufts of long-deadened grass appear, and somehow--somehow, one morning, the snow recedes as far as it ever will, and everything is green and living.
Her breath catches to see it. Sansa is a child of summer; her memories are of bounty giving way to scarcity, not of the joy of reawakening.
Mya, who remembers hazily the spring of her childhood, follows her outside, laughing kindly at the way Sansa's eyes light up at their transformed surroundings. They mark the beginning of everything that day with a long, reckless kiss, amid the scent of the posies and the clean, new earth.
On a Day Like This
They aren't sure where the girl comes from, when she shows up at Winterfell. Sansa's heart refuses to send her on her way, nor to deposit her in the servants' quarters without question or comment.
So they have her take tea with them that afternoon.
A private tea, only Mya, Sansa, the child, and every sweet Sansa can procure on short notice; the table overflows with lemon cakes. The girl must have five years or so to her name, by the looks of her, but she's thin and small and hesitant, stumbling over the words and watching the pastries with wary eyes. Too many children are hungry these days, and the Queen of the North must keep watch over all those people of her doman. Mya knows that the shadows of other, long dead Starks weigh upon Sansa's thoughts.
As her constant companion (as, lacking any more politic way of explaining her presence, they call Mya), she knows a great deal of Sansa.
This particular citizen is called Brynne, and she likes lemon cakes nearly as well as her hostess, judging by the way she has managed to swallow six of them so far. And Sansa is clearly charmed by her; her bright eyes plead with Mya's before Brynne ever gives her name around a mouthful of food. The question there is nakedly Could we keep her?
The child won't solve their problems: the fact that without a royal consort (one who isn't a secret, anyway), without an heir, Sansa's position does not bode well for the future. There is little security in a childless queen. But Sansa wants no one but Mya, has made that clear in hushed, heated conversations late at night, and will not see reason about it. The way she dotes on others' children makes it clear that Sansa would not mind an heir in possibility or practice--only the getting of it.
Mya knows she should advise against this, dig her heels in--or kick, as her mules are wont to.
She also knows that she can't bring herself to say the word "no" to the possibility of the child before them, with hair as brilliantly auburn as her lover's.
Final version of my 10 songs Mya/Sansa fic, ooh. Just in case you wanted the meme one more time--
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!
4. Do ten of these, then post them.
Of course, I cheated and edited and rearranged and so on. Fuck you, I do what I want &cet. The song list in this case (since several of them are lesser-known covers) is:
1. "Peggy-O" by Simon & Garfunkel
2. "You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will." by Bright Eyes
3. "Sh-Boom" by The Crew-Cuts
4. "Beautiful" by Carole King
5. "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" by Lucy Kaplansky
6. "David's Lamentation" by the Paul Hillier Singers
7. "A Case of You" by k.d. lang
8. "You Make It Seem Like Nothing" by Elliott Smith
9. "August" by Tim Janis
10. "On A Day Like This" by Elbow
They ramble over paths outside as well as within the halls of the castle; Mya knows the land as she knows the lines in her callused palms, even iced over as it is now. Her eyes are sharp, her footing sure. When necessary, her grip on Alayne's forearm is firm, until Alayne's footing begins to feel certain, too.
It is freezing out, far colder than all the summer years that stretch back in Alayne's memory, but the frigid edge in the air makes all her senses feel sharper. And Mya's presence at her side, occasionally pointing out something interesting on their path, makes their sojourns all the more pleasant. This, she thinks, is what having a sister could have been like: walking arm in arm, together braced against the wind.
Mya always seems to find Alayne when she feels like she is going to scream and break into far too many pieces. She's not...comforting, exactly, not in the way that Alayne is used to thinking of comforting, but she's--not Littlefinger, with his lingering gazes and kisses hello. And Mya's voice is always brisk and always the same.
Let's go walking, she says. And the undercurrent is Let's forget this for now, whatever it is.
They visit the mules. Mya never asks, and most of the time, Alayne doesn't tell. And yet, when they're together, it no longer matters. Whatever it is.
"No, it goes like this," Alayne says, laughing. And she hums the melody again, of a song that she remembers from a childhood she pretends away. It lilts in the air between them, if a bit shakily.
"I can't sing," Mya complains. "The mules're going to start complaining if I try it again."
"You can do it." Alayne leans in a little. Her skirts must be picking up all sorts of dust from the great pile of hay they've claimed for their own, she suddenly realizes, but she doesn't care at all this afternoon. "With me?"
Mya can't do it, and they both know it--she knows more drinking songs than Alayne was aware existed, and can burst out with an off key rendition of a couple of verses of each of them, but not this kind of singing, the sort that well-bred girls are taught. They sing it together anyway, dissolving into giggles and snickering that only the beasts are present to witness.
Mya keeps her own counsel most of the time, but her displeasure inevitably makes itself known when it's present. The silences in passing make Alayne's stomach feel like it's knotting itself up--on the rare occasions they do pass each other. Her friend can also vanish into the recesses of the castle when she likes, too, and she has years of life there aiding her disappearances.
Alayne isn't sure what to do about it, now that Mya is angry with her. Especially when Alayne is angry, too, still--much as she wishes she wasn't. The days are far longer with Lady Myranda and Sweetrobin as her most constant companions.
Invitations go unanswered, and one night, she realizes as she slips into bed that if anything is going to change, she will have to visit the stables and find the mules' caretaker (who, it turns out, is the stubbornest of them all) herself.
They stare at each other, hard. Mya's eyes are brilliantly blue and stormy, and Alayne imagines hers are hardly kinder--but she can't bear any more stiff rebukes (from her) and sharp-tongued commentary (from Mya).
She looks down at the stone floor, with cracks running beneath her feet, and up once more at Mya. A silent sigh, and she apologizes.
"You took the words out of my mouth," Mya grumbles affably later, when they are lying with their heads together on the mules' dinner. There's straw in their hair, and occasional furtive glances for anyone listening. "You looked so furious, standing there, and I didn't want but to tell you I was wrong."
Alayne is not sorry that Robert Arryn is dead.
She wishes she could pretend otherwise, but it takes enough energy to playact mourning when she's in public. Doing so in her private thoughts would exhaust her.
The day after he's laid to rest, she breaks her fast late in the morning. Mya answers her invitation to join her; they swallow the bland remnants of the harvest while carefully speaking of every subject but young Sweetrobin.
She doesn't know what she's doing.
She is suddenly Sansa again, and her wedding night was an unmitigated disaster, without the touch she had scarcely dared to imagine in private fancies long ago. Mya has done this before, though--even if she had said once, looking out a window over the sprawling expanse of snow, that she'd never tried kissing anyone but men (and mostly Mychel Redfort) before she'd met Alayne.
But it's warm in Alayne's chambers, the dimness of candlelight and the radiating heat of the fire flickering licks of colour into her room and setting shadows dancing at the edges of their reach. The door is barred, Robin is dead and gone, and she almost feels secure--and Mya's mouth is too welcoming to worry on anything more than her inexperience.
They've somehow ended up on the floor in front of the hearth, Mya kissing her neck while her fingers wander, Alayne tentatively drawing open Mya's leathers, and it almost feels as though she is getting a second chance. If only there were cloaks to lay on each others' shoulders.
They both know that Mya cannot stay, even as they lay in Alayne's bed together. The leaving will be complicated enough, given the hour, though women's late-night confidences are not so questionable as they might be: imagine if Mya had been a man, Alayne tells herself, and if Littlefinger heard of it.
But even if Alayne was unconcerned with others--Littlefinger, specifically, for no one else holds such sway over her--noticing Mya's presence, she has mules to tend to. A late retreat to her own quarters seems the best plan action.
If only it could be delayed somehow--if only they could remain as they are forever, or at least a little longer. Alayne laces her fingers with Mya's under the heavy covers, the warmth of another body against hers still novel and exciting. Curled together in the deep shadows of a room lit only by embers, she wants nothing more in the world.
It is years before the spring comes, but when it does, Sansa does not know if she can trust her eyes. First come tiny white flowers, only just breaking the surface of the slowly-melting snow; they can throw snowballs with one hand while proffering fistfuls of blossoms with the other. Then, tufts of long-deadened grass appear, and somehow--somehow, one morning, the snow recedes as far as it ever will, and everything is green and living.
Her breath catches to see it. Sansa is a child of summer; her memories are of bounty giving way to scarcity, not of the joy of reawakening.
Mya, who remembers hazily the spring of her childhood, follows her outside, laughing kindly at the way Sansa's eyes light up at their transformed surroundings. They mark the beginning of everything that day with a long, reckless kiss, amid the scent of the posies and the clean, new earth.
They aren't sure where the girl comes from, when she shows up at Winterfell. Sansa's heart refuses to send her on her way, nor to deposit her in the servants' quarters without question or comment.
So they have her take tea with them that afternoon.
A private tea, only Mya, Sansa, the child, and every sweet Sansa can procure on short notice; the table overflows with lemon cakes. The girl must have five years or so to her name, by the looks of her, but she's thin and small and hesitant, stumbling over the words and watching the pastries with wary eyes. Too many children are hungry these days, and the Queen of the North must keep watch over all those people of her doman. Mya knows that the shadows of other, long dead Starks weigh upon Sansa's thoughts.
As her constant companion (as, lacking any more politic way of explaining her presence, they call Mya), she knows a great deal of Sansa.
This particular citizen is called Brynne, and she likes lemon cakes nearly as well as her hostess, judging by the way she has managed to swallow six of them so far. And Sansa is clearly charmed by her; her bright eyes plead with Mya's before Brynne ever gives her name around a mouthful of food. The question there is nakedly Could we keep her?
The child won't solve their problems: the fact that without a royal consort (one who isn't a secret, anyway), without an heir, Sansa's position does not bode well for the future. There is little security in a childless queen. But Sansa wants no one but Mya, has made that clear in hushed, heated conversations late at night, and will not see reason about it. The way she dotes on others' children makes it clear that Sansa would not mind an heir in possibility or practice--only the getting of it.
Mya knows she should advise against this, dig her heels in--or kick, as her mules are wont to.
She also knows that she can't bring herself to say the word "no" to the possibility of the child before them, with hair as brilliantly auburn as her lover's.
