(second lemon cake) video ✧ locked to seelie

[steeledskin]

Dear fellows and members of the Seelie court -- [ the voice which addresses the locket is composed and clear and perfectly conscientious. but the girl whose image accompanies the voice looks a little less than all those things. her dark-dyed hair is fastened in an uncommonly simple braid...and if one looks very closely, she can be seen to have a haggard look about her. she's somewhere outside and all her caution is bent at hiding a panic she doesn't want to share with strangers. nor with those few genuinely waiting on her return. ]

I don't want to alarm any of you. Indeed, I speak to the very opposite of that effect. It's -- [ her gaze flickers 'off-screen' for a moment ] -- it's Alayne Stone. Those of you who are acquaintances [ not friends ] ought to know that I've found myself...left behind. I'm sorry. It should not have happened. But I suspect I won't make Caer Glaem again for some time. [ the fault of the matter is a little trickier than that, but she knows better than to play with implications. so after a steadying breath, she presses onwards. ] Or we won’t -- because I'm not alone. [ i have nymeria, she thinks but doesn’t dare to say. just like how sansa wants to speak directly to those who know her for who she really is -- but instead: ] I have a knight with me.

Don't I, Ser Gendry? [ and she twists her locket, letting it capture the surly blacksmith who stands a few paces away from her with an irritated expression. his armour is dented and blooded and the man sags with an obvious exhaustion. ser gendry is a man who looks and feels beaten, but it does not stop him from standing tall. he is a talisman of sorts: a warning, to any sansa fears might prey upon what would otherwise be a journey fraught with vulnerability. ser gendry is here; she is protected, albeit not happily so. he at last looks towards her and her locket and grumbles an unhappy agreement to her statement, which is accompanied by a nod. ]

A lady needn’t despair when she’s so well accompanied. Instead, my thoughts are with the returned; I pray the High Queen’s desired prize was taken without steep costs or losses. [ following this, there is no formal farewell. no official sign-off. her attention lingers, perhaps waiting for one or two responses in particular. ]

( ooc; sansa and gendry are now officially stranded and making their long way back to caer glaem -- and it’ll take them at least two months, though they’ll be reachable by locket at their respective ic inboxes. but for now, responses to this post will receive replies from one or the other or both!)

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[steeledskin]

"You're likely right," she said. Perfectly compliant. But her heart and mind protested: I have been a captive, she thought. Perhaps not in a dungeon or a pen. But she had not been free, though fed and bathed and entertained (to a degree). And so for that reason amidst a hundred others she kept the protest to herself. He would laugh at her, she thought, if she claimed life in the Red Keep as captivity. Who was to say whether the Unseelie Court would be so gracious were they to catch her now?

She paused. Wiggled her food inside her shoe as if to miraculously find a half-inch deviation where her blisters did not smart. And then she began walking again. "I'm certain it was dreadful. Whatever went on at Harrenhal would not have happened under its rightful lord."

Petyr. The Lannisters may have given him the castle, but she still supported his claim on that seat.

[bullhorned]

"Rightful lord? And who's that? When I was there, it was the Lannisters that ruled it, with the Mountain and his ilk running it. But then Roose Bolton managed to take over and he was no better." Better, he thought, that Arya had never released Roose Bolton. Perhaps things would have been better then. "They say it's ruled by someone else now. Littlefinger, they call him. Likely he's as bad as they are."

He held no special animosity for the coin collector. He knew of Petyr Baelish from his life in King's Landing and had seen the man, though he'd never spoken to him. But he was a lord and in with the Lannisters. He reckoned that made him as bad as the rest.

[steeledskin]

"Lord Baelish is a good man," she insisted. And although she did not always believe the line, she gave it now with full sincerity. Sansa was a stricken soul, but she would not let this rough-tongued knight tear down a man he'd never met. Not when she owed so much of her survival to him.

She quickened her pace, coming even with Ser Gendry. "If he'd been at Harrenhal, everything would have been fine. I'm sure of it. He'd protect Arya, too."

Petyr would not keep her from her sister, certainly! If they had been at that castle instead of the Eyrie.

[bullhorned]

Gendry was not convinced. He glanced at her and did little to hide the skepticism in his raised eyebrows and long grimace. But a shrug of the shoulder and turn of the head and he was giving it little more thought than that.

"As you say. It don't much matter, because he wasn't there."

[steeledskin]

"You don't believe me."

Gendry was right: it didn't matter; Petyr was never there. But it stung to have him question her so openly. So flagrantly. When she was now called upon to put so much trust in him, he could barely summon a fraction of the same for her simple claims. It didn't make her angry so much as it made her doubt herself. Perhaps he was right not to believe it -- perhaps the rest of the world saw Littlefinger, not Petyr, and understood that he could not be trusted.

Except by her, she thought. And on some claims.

[bullhorned]

He shrugged. "Am I supposed to, just on account of you being high born? You don't trust me, you said as much before, so I figure your weird might well as mean the same to me."

He knew it was petty. But he reckoned that this way he would prove himself to her by action rather than shallow words."

[steeledskin]

"I suppose you've no obligation to trust a thing I say, no," she conceded. And that made her feel very sad and bereft and lonely indeed. Worse yet, she'd fought with Arya during their brief rest on the roadside. The conflict replayed itself over and over, and every time Sansa demonized herself a little more.

"But I trusted him." To a point. "And I wish he was here, now. None of this would have happened."

[bullhorned]

He wished that man was here as well, then he might be relieved a burden. He looked back at her. "And what would trusting him hey you? I've seen him before. He's a small bugger and likely don't know a sword from one of his whores. He'd do you no good out here where his coin means nothing."

He faced the road again. "You're better off in my company. I survived a road like this before when others didn't."

[steeledskin]

Better off! She would have laughed, were she not so unhappy. Sansa fully believed that if Baelish had been in these lands, her name would never have ended up on any list for any quest. And if it did, she would have already had a knight of her own -- one who might make her feel a little more stalwart in the presence of Jaime Lannister's mere name. She knew just how much damage Petyr could do, although she would not boast of it to Gendry.

"I would ask you not to speak of my friends like that. Think it all you want, but please don't say it."

[bullhorned]

He snorted. "As you say. I won't speak ill of your Baelish."

He trudged along again now gloomily staring at the path ahead. He regretted being so harsh. He'd tried to convince Arya to be nicer. But somehow Sansa had come to represent all he disliked in nobility. "... I appreciate those things you said about me. You didn't have to make me sound so decent. I know you don't like me as much you made it sound."

[steeledskin]

Her steps faltered. No, Sansa thought, she did not like him all that much. She rather dreaded his continued company and she knew she would have nightmares when she next tried to sleep. He was angry and he was stupid and she doubted he knew enough to protect her from anything. But he was all she had -- and for that, at least, she managed to show a modicum of gratitude.

"It's important they think I'm safe," she answered as diplomatically as she dared. "The more decent you sound, the safer I seem."

In the end, it underlined one remaining truth: she needed him, either way.

[bullhorned]

"But it don't actually make you any safer. You could have told them what you really thought and had a dozen armored fools coming to rescue you."

But instead, no one was coming. This was what surprised him the most. They had an elf king, only half interested in their fate, who might meet them halfway. Ser Loras might ride out to meet them. But there was no rescue. Not even for Lady Sansa Stark. He reckoned that was jut the way of it. This was where the Starks stood now.

[steeledskin]

"Of course it did," she insisted. "This way, if word gets 'round to someone who would do me harm -- well, perhaps they'll think twice about daring a knight who has had such bright words ascribed to him."

Sansa was not comfortable with revealing the machinations behind her decisions. It felt an awful lot like stripping away protective layers: cloaks and gloves and boots and revealing the skin beneath. But she resigned herself to sharing some things with him simply because they had to survive this road together. Just like Lord Baelish had revealed some things to her on their journey from the capital.

[bullhorned]

He grinned, almost in a mocking sort of way. "Make them fear me, eh? Ser Gendry the Bull. So vicious he fought his way from the gutter to the Riverlands. Faced the Mountain and the Kingslayer and lived to tell the tale. Just don't ask him to repeat the tales, because they won't be so impressive as they first seem."

Chuckling, he walked further along in his clanging armor. "Only, Ser Jaime knows he could kill me easily in a fight. So it's only our own allies what will be fooled."

[steeledskin]

"And I don't mind it if our allies are fooled, Ser Gendry. Most of them are strangers to me."

After all, she held even the kinder strangers at arm's length as Alayne Stone. Even allowing Gendry to know her honest name had happened in a fit of startled exuberance -- a brief flash-in-the-pan moment of delight and trust that she now suspected she ought to regret. Except...

Except would he have been bothering to protect her at all were she not a Stark? Sansa did not know.

[bullhorned]

He nodded. "Aye. So it is. It's why letting them think we'll go to Station is for the best. They've got less than no reason to be loyal to the High King and Queen, so that means they've got no reason to be loyal to us either."

There at last was something they could agree on. The two of them, lost in these lands, could trust no one. So long as they were both smart enough to keep that in mind, they might well still survive.

[steeledskin]

To be without loyal allies was a state familiar to her -- though she knew if they could only get near enough to Caer Glaem she might count upon Ser Loras or Lord Renly. But it was foolish to ask them to come a-hunting now, when she could barely tell them where exactly she was. And it would take them near as long as -- oh, if only they had horses.

Sansa walked in silence for the next hour with still no sight of water. Soon, she hoped. Soon. Perhaps it was desperation for distraction or simple thirst that drove her to be honest, but she found herself finally breaking the wordless wall between them with a simple miserable statement: "I made Arya angry."

[bullhorned]

Gendry's throat was dry now. His march had become something of a miserable stagger as his armor began to feel heavier and heavier with each step. When she spoke, he took it as an invitation to halt. He stopped along the road and moved towards a tree to lean against. Gods, but he was tired.

"It don't take much to make her mad," he muttered. He thought to simply call Arya stupid, but that was best not said about a high born lady to her sister. Even if he had no reason to feel repercussion. "She'll be over it, soon enough."

[steeledskin]

"Arya! Over it!"

A brittle parched laugh. Sansa wiped sweat from her brow and glanced nervously at the way he walked. He seemed unstable. If they were attacked now, she doubted he'd be able to stand. And so she very nearly suggested they rest. Only...only they needed water more than rest and the latter could come once the former was found.

"She holds grudges. She always did," Sansa said -- sounding a lot as though she possessed a few of her own.

[bullhorned]

"Aye, if your last name is Lannister. But she's been angry at me a dozen times over before. Don't stop her from coming to bother me again later."

He fidgeted at the straps of his gauntlet, halfheartedly trying to loosen them. But his focus seemed off and doing it one handed was just becoming too much a nuisance. He stopped, sucked in a breath, then looked to her.

"It's time I dump some of this armor."

[steeledskin]

Everything Gendry said was true. True enough. Although it certainly failed to account for how cruel sisters could be to one another. And -- Sansa would have told him this if she felt comfortable enough to remind him -- by the laws of gods and men, her last name was Lannister. Ought to be Lannister. A lion by legal marriage.

"...Dump the armour?" She asked, stopping short. "Is that wise?"

[bullhorned]

"No. Likely not. But there's no way I'll make it back wearing all this. I'll need to part with most of it."

Not the helmet, though. He would not lose that again. And he reckoned he would keep the gauntlet on his sword arm, for extra protection. The chainmail was not so cumbersome, so he might keep that as well. The rest, however, was unnecessary. So he began to work on the strap for his plate armor, but that was proving to be even more cumbersome.

[steeledskin]

It made her uncomfortable that he should announce his difficulties so: that he would confess to being burdened by the armour, and to force the realization that its loss would be on her shoulders. Sansa wondered if that burden would be (in the long run) much heavier than the one he now sought to leave behind. She walked a little farther, but with no intentions of continuing on without him. Nor of hurrying him along. Instead, she was chary. She peered into the tree-trunks and frowned at the path ahead.

And she tried to ignore the trouble he was having with his straps. If she paid it too close attention, she feared she might feel obligated to offer her assistance. It wasn't that she didn't want to help, but rather offering it was a leap their rough acquaintanceship might not be prepared to take.

"What -- just toss it to the side of the road?" She may be a lady and she may be as high born as they came, but even she had a sense for what was wasteful.

[bullhorned]

He left the strap alone as he saw a wisdom in what she was saying, even if perhaps not the way she intended. He pushed himself off the tree and began to move into the woods.

"No, not the road. Best leave it where it won't be found." It was perhaps obvious already that they would be on the road. Better to leave no sign of their passing in such a case. He tilted his head so she might follow him, because he wanted to walk a decent distance into the forest to leave the armor.

[steeledskin]

Sansa turned and nodded -- gratified and pleased with the drive for secrecy. She was slowly tripping across the same conclusion Gendry had come to hours before: whatever their feelings on the matter, and whoever their allies back at the castle, they only had each other on the road. Each other and their guile. She has been thinking of the wastage and the shame of losing his armour, and he had been right to think instead on the danger of leaving good metal in their wake.

So she grabbed at her skirts and stepped quickly in order to follow him into the woods. Nymeria -- some distance behind but not out of sight -- seemed to cut into the treeline as if understanding that she would reach them on an angle.

"If we had a spade, we might bury it--" She said, misery leaking into her voice because she knew it wasn't a helpful suggestion. The only metal they had was the metal he was wearing.