SEMI-CLOSED. i'm a slow learner.

[unprays]

Who: sansa stark (unprays) & various
What: sansa does rounds after the whole kidnapping thing, and also deals with her father going back to stasis.
When: late march, possibly also early april
Where: both olympia and wyver
Warning(s): your standard game of thrones warnings apply, along with all the warnings you could think for the previous event.

( starters in the comments! if you want one, hit me up on plurk @ celen or send me a PM and we can plot something! or just wildcard me, that works too ♥ )

Comments

[unprays]

Of that I have no doubt, [ she answers sharply, ] for if that is your view of women I wonder you'd been able to find a willing mistress, had you wanted one.

[ but it's clear he hasn't, from the tone of his voice, and that is what makes her own anger dull into blunt annoyance. ]

You made an assumption, ser, based on nothing but the fact that I am a woman and your friend is a man. That means you believed that he would not seek my company for other reasons than lying with me. [ perhaps once, she'd have been too shy to speak of it like this, but that shyness has long since died. ]

Which, in turn, was an insult to me, my intelligence, my mind. Like all I could offer was my body. [ she all but spits out the word. ] And yet... you spoke of rhetoric, that my words were eloquently expressed. So it seems you don't think I'm unintelligent. [ there's a very clear underlying question there: do you? ]

[idealisme]

[It is as succinct and logical an explanation as he'd expect from Combeferre. There's the same way of asking questions without asking them, which has Enjolras setting his hands on his hips ready to give his exasperated reply before he realises he's done so.]

I have made many assumptions. Wrong assumptions, I see now. [It frustrates him, because it distracts from the conversation they could be having.

This is why fucking and all such matters aren't worth his time, he reminds himself.] I will not attempt to justify myself, that would be a waste of both our times. Will you accept my apology?

[There's the barest hesitation and he extends his hand. If men and women are to be friends, surely he can offer a handshake as an apology just as he would to any other man.]

[unprays]

[ for a moment, she holds her breath, daggers in her eyes. then she breathes out and the frost melts like the first days of spring. ]

Alright, [ she responds, because more than the apology itself, it's the fact he's willing to shake her hand that does it. like an equal. she reaches out and takes his hand — as unfamiliar a gesture as it must be to him, though for her it's the fact he's not kissing her hand but shaking it. and yet she's glad for it, prefers this. ]

I've learned that most of us make assumptions based on how we've lived, or where, or how. I know I've made them, before, just as wrong as yours. It'd be hypocritical of me not to forgive your mistakes if I want my own to be forgiven by others.

[idealisme]

[He holds her gaze, neither wilting under her stare nor attempting to out-glare her. It is a relief, however, that she takes his hand.

He nods as they shake, in thanks and acceptance.]

What is the political thought in-- [A pause. He's still unsure what to call the lands they lived in before here.] the place from which you've come? You said that men rose to oppose the king- but that they were crowned king in turn.

[unprays]

[ it's to his credit, the way he meets her gaze, steady and even. ]

Monarchy, [ she answers succinctly, having learned enough of different types of government by now to call it that. ] The ruler of the Seven Kingdoms was always a king, or a queen. But when the king died, and his son rose to his place, others contested his right to rule and were crowned kings in their own right, in their own lands. Each thought they had more right to rule than King Joffrey. Had any of them succeeded in challenging the throne, they would have taken it in turn.

All they did was cause a war where people died by the thousands.

[idealisme]

[That sounds familiar enough. Enjolras purses his lips, an expression Sansa may be coming to recognise as his thinking-about-something-that-irks-him expression.]

By what right did these kings claim lordship over the people? In Europe, the continent where I lived, they claimed that God himself had chosen them and their heirs to be kings. [Can you hear the sarcasm? That's something Enjolras thinks is a steaming pile of horse shit.]

[unprays]

[ she smiles at that, though it's far from being a happy smile — she smiles because she knows exactly what that sounds like. using the Gods, for one purpose or another. praying for the Gods for good fortune, and watching everyone die. ]

No right other than the right by conquest. Because they were stronger than anyone else. When the Targaryens conquered the Seven Kingdoms, they did so with their dragons, burning everyone who resisted them. When the Mad King started to burn his subjects, Robert Baratheon gathered an army and defeated the Targaryen loyalists. The right to rule is yours only until someone stronger comes along.

[idealisme]

[There's a lot to think about in that, but first-]

You also had dragons in your home, madame? It seems Paris was one of the few lands lacking such destructive beasts.

[He's tried not to think about it, but he finds himself returning to the question on occasion.]

[unprays]

Had. [ she gives him a wry half-smile. ]

By my time, they were all gone. They were thought to be gone forever, until three were born... but that happened in another land, and though my brother and the mother of these dragons tell me they did fly to Westeros eventually, I never saw them.

[idealisme]

There are stories that there were once dragons in Europe, until they were hunted to death.

[Enjolras is unaccustomed to this, speaking about nothing at all with strangers. It sits uneasily in his gut, making him shift his weight.] A dragon would certainly make overpowering a population and imposing one's rule easier. [There's a momentary hesitation and his brow knits together.] I wonder that Wyver have not tried it.

[unprays]

They died because they were imprisoned, in Westeros. They were kept chained, because after the Targaryens had conquered the land, they could no longer fly free, burning and eating whatever they wanted. And so they grew smaller, and smaller, until they died out.

[ she's wondered the same thing, and so she has a thought answer ready. ] The dragons here are smaller, more like horses. Perhaps they would do for cavalry, but they couldn't burn a city by flying over it once. But it's a reasonable concern.