FIC SUMMARY: Loki rescuring Sansa by the battle of Blackwater
RATING: Mature NC-17
WARNINGS/TRIGGERS/AUTHORS NOTES: blood and lemon
FEEDBACK/COMMENTS: Frostwolf
While the Frostgiants took the Kings Road, Loki drew carefully a circular ornament in the ground of Mud Gate. Thanks to this magical feature he arrived with Sansa, Tyrion and Shae in the early morning at the Gates of Winterfell.
Sansa had just time to hug Maester Luwin and her survived brothers Bran and Rickon. Even befor they could went to break the fast, Sansa und Loki had there first fight.
„What do you mean; Not until you wear my colours?“, hissed her King. He grabbed her and shook her in frustration. "My lady, remind your courtesy, remind your place! You will wear my colors early enough and I will have you NOW!"
Sansa took a deep breath. "I must make my point. Or we fight for all the things I want", she admonished herself. "I would LOVE to be yours, my king! You really don't know this?", she asked him enthusiastic. "But we both not common people. We can't just do like we want. Even because we will rule!"
Loki raised an eyebrow and set her free from his grip. "Explain yourself, my lady", he ordered grim.
„I learned at the Court that a King - or a Queen - who did like he wanted is a selfish and bad leader. It sounds strange but we must first think about the people. Without them in our back we have no Kingdom to rule." While she talked Sansa watched Loki paced around impatiently in front of the fireplace.
„I will be friendly to your peasants if this it is what you want", he grumbled.
"This is NOT what I want!", she replied sharply. “By the old gods, Loki! You lifed here, why you do don't know this!“
He looked at her, as he would see her for the first time.
"We must make them love us", Sansa went on. "Obey us willingly and not by pressure."
She joined her King by the fireplace and take his hand in hers. "Loki, this is the North. This people are not peasants. This are free men, who adored my father, who loved to follow the Lord of Winterfell. And you have to fill this vacuum!"
Her King nodded with a soft smile. "This is important, isn't it? The name, the colours and the signet? The north men need this, to know all is well."
"Yes", Sansa said. " This is the reason why you must wear the grey and the direwolf. Because this we must have a traditional wedding in the Godswoods. And the next morning the bloody sheet hanging from the tower."
Loki smirked. "So our men see all is well with the young wolf lady?"
Sansa closed her eyes a moment, the remembrance of another lady made her sad. "The old gods are good ... my new god listen to me", she prayed in silence.
They stands still in front of the fire place, his hand in hers. Without any words Sansa kneel for her god and king and looked up to him. She saw his eyes in surprise wide open.
"Loki Laufeyson", she started ernest. "Well, now this is clear between us ... would you give me the honour to take my color, my signet and my titel? Could you swear to help me protecting the free north against all enemies?“ Sansa smiled brightly. „At your realm you are the king. Here in the north YOU will be the Lord of Winterfell.“
With wide and wet eyes he listened to her wooing. As Sansa ended she saw him quickly blinked. He opened his mouth, shook his head and seemed not to find a word. Silently he helped her back to her feet and cleared his throat.
"First", he started, "the next time you dare to kneel before me I will beat you bloody." Loki lifted her chin with his fingers and looked deep in her eyes. "The Queen of the North will kneel for no one!"
Sansa began to chuckle.
"Second," he paused, watched Sansas Face and started to smile. "I apologize about my egoistic behavior. I still must learn to act like a king. But I try it, my dear Sansa."
Sansa lifted her face to his and kissed him gentle.
"Thirdly," , he spoke in her mouth, " of course I will wear your color, your signet and your titel! I will obey happily."
Sansa felt a load fell from her and started to relax.
"And fourthly," , he continued, "be the old gods have mercy with Maester Luwin! I will have it not, when he don't fix the wed arrangements till to morrow night!"
Sansa laughed out loud. "You could not wait just one more night? After more than a year?"
Her King embraced her and pressed her strong on his slender body. "Did this feels for you like someone who could wait?"
Hey all! Merry Christmas and/or happy Monday. This is a special time of year for me, and I wanted to commemorate it this year by gifting you all a little something that relates to the season. So, here’s a short story I wrote for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards! My primary aim here is to capture the spooky, magical winter vibe that always accompanies this season. I hope you like it :D
(Story starts under the cut for convenience of length! Check out my tags for content warnings if ya need them, or feel free to message me about any concerns <3)
I ran through the snow on the Winterking’s feast, deep in the forest, alone. My feet were bare and numb with ice. My nightdress caught and tore in the brush. Snow clung to my hair, left long and loose, and my tears froze a solid ice mask on my face.
Shouts chased me, bouncing tree to tree. I mustn’t stop running. Stopping meant my pursuers would catch me, and their success would spell my death. I paused for a moment, resting my hand on a tree, because I couldn’t go any longer without getting my breath. I suppressed a sob, pressing a hand frozen at the fingertips to my face.
The feast had been mere hours ago. It felt like an eon. I couldn’t remember what the torches felt like, the firelight burning in my father’s great timber hall. I couldn’t remember the taste of the meal on the tables, laden with delicacies- roasted pigs on spits, thin-shelled eggs, brandied walnuts all sticky and warm. All I could conjure in full was a long coat of white furs, wrapped around my shoulders and his. I could see his eyes, dark as an iced pond. I didn’t want to think about my new husband, but my mind wasn’t giving me a choice.
I looked back. Between dark, leafless trees came a flicker of orange light, a leaping and vicious jet of fire. I took flight again. I prayed that they didn’t have hounds- but who would answer my prayers? The gods and spirits wouldn’t listen. They hadn’t stopped the blood from flowing in my father’s hall. When I crept from my room, awakened by the noise, my prayers hadn’t prevented my brothers from falling to the sword. No, the gods didn’t care, but I prayed as I fled, because what else was I to do? I didn’t have a weapon, and I wouldn’t know how to use one if I did.
I came up on a stream, flowing fast around jagged blocks of ice like the ships of invaders. I hesitated, but I couldn’t stop. I splashed into the stream. Water cold as liquid death pulled at my legs until I dragged myself, shaking, up the opposite bank of snow. My nightdress leaked with ice and blood as I pulled it up with me.
Three cloaked men emerged from the forest on the opposite bank. The first two held drawn swords, high and bright, that glinted in the light of their torches. The third carried not a sword, but something almost worse: a longbow. He shouted to his companions as I scrambled up the bank and into the tree line again.
I ran, and I ran, and I ran, until the swirling flakes of snow plastered themselves to my face and the winter wind tore the air from my lungs. I ran from the men, and I ran from visions of blood mixed with spilled cherry wine under the capacious ceiling of my father’s hall. I ran like a rabbit, but I wasn’t fast enough to outrun the wolves. I was fast enough, however, to run out over a break in the forest floor before my panicked mind told me to stop.
My feet broke through a layer of leaves and brush and met the open air. I pitched forward and fell down a dark hole. I closed my eyes. This was how I was going to die. I was almost grateful; it was better than a slow death at the end of a blade.
The dark swallowed me whole with easy, painless grace. My last thought was one of thanks.
Later- I can’t say how much later- I found myself lying facedown in something soft. The light was gone and I heard no calls, but if this was death, it didn’t feel at all like I would have suspected. Why could I still see the cruel, sharp lines of my husband’s face in my mind’s eye? Why was I still so cold?
I drew myself up onto my forearms. My hair and dress fanned around me across the ground. My hair looked black, as it should, but my cream-colored nightdress seemed a dingy gray against the shining purity of the snow. I gathered a handful of the stuff in awe, forgetting the cold of my hands. The snow sparkled like a million shards of diamond, or the broken dust of some shattered star.
I had to tear my eyes away to orient myself. I was in a forest clearing, but this looked nothing like the forest of my father’s lands. It wasn’t only the snow; the trees were far taller than the ones I knew, so high that I couldn’t see the tops, and all were encased in thick frosting swirls of ice. A solid river and a sugary waterfall were suspended in place, reflecting back a thousand thousand stars on their shimmering surfaces. And the strangest thing by far was the presence of animals, many dozens of animals: white rabbits, great birds of prey with golden eyes, moose standing in conversation with boars, quails playing tag with voles. There were gray mice the size of thimbles standing behind the ears of great black forest cats at rest; cardinals stood out on the snow in bright crimson glory. They wore wreaths of red berries and sharp holly leaves. The animals weren’t in close proximity to me; they congregated around a large figure standing several yards away. When I saw him, I understood why.
He was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, shaped nearly like a massive stag. His coat was thick and dark, made of something like fur and something like the gorgeous and terrible gleam of a winter sea under the moonlight. His eyes were the shifting purple, black, and gray of a winter storm. His horns were tall and tangled and crafted of pure, sparkling silver, twined with little bells and frosted at the ends. Between them sat a crown of branches. Waters droplets frozen in the shape and shine of diamonds served as gemstones.
I dropped my head at once, in reverence. But the Winterking spoke to me in the voice of snow building miles deep and glaciers collapsing into the sea.
“You needn’t fear us or bow to us,” he said. I lifted my head. He dipped his, beckoning me forward, breathing clouds into the air from his velvety muzzle. “Come. Get up, now. Come forward and speak with us.”
I stood. I felt weightless, like I walked in a dream. As I ventured toward the Winterking, cardinals and snow mice placed a wreath of icy branches on my brow and draped a cloak of stars around my shoulders. At once I was warm; the pain left my fingers and toes. The ice of tears sloughed from my face and melted onto the snow. I held on to my cloak, grateful, as I came to stand mere feet before the Winterking.
He lowered his head to look me in the eye. His gaze was immense, but not as cold as I might have thought.
“Welcome to my court, Eira Daughter of Cole,” said the Winterking. “In your realm they call you king’s child, do they not?”
“Yes,” was all I said. It didn’t seem right to call the Winterking “your majesty.” There was something too human about the phrase.
He gazed into my eyes. “You have seen great woe tonight, king’s daughter.”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“Your wicked husband has waged a war against your family, good hosts who had promised to protect his retinue against the bitterness of my snows.” The Winterking closed his eyes, face turning to pain. The creatures closest to him tittered, anxious. “They have done a great crime to you and yours in the sight of my court. We owe you a debt, Eira Daughter of Cole. How can we repay your sorrows?”
I considered the question. The Winterking’s court pressed in closer to me, brushing me with wings and tails in the way mothers might stroke and comfort their children.
Images rose in my mind: my husband’s dark eyes in a handsome face of stone. My father’s booming laugh. My sisters braiding ribbons through my hair. My brothers falling in pools of deadly crimson that stained my husband’s white furs and the cloaks of his men. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I knew exactly what I wanted.
“Give me the power to kill them all,” I said to the Winterking. “Give me the tools to enact my revenge.”
He nodded, contemplative. “As the winter winds reclaim their domain each year from the invading summer breezes. I could, king’s daughter. But I hesitate to give you a gift that you could easily take for yourself.”
“What do you mean?” My face began to heat. I imagined spilling their blood, as they’d spilled my brothers’. I imagined breaking the doors of their halls and shaking them to their very foundations until they crumbled at my feet. “I have no gifts available to me. I have nothing. I don’t have any family, or skill, or access to power.”
“Haven’t you?” said the Winterking. “Don’t be so sure, king’s daughter. You must look closer.”
The Winterking closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they had changed into a swirling silver that solidified to form two clear mirrors. I saw my own face reflected back at me: my deep eyes, my cheeks and nose reddened from cold, my hair hanging long and dark all around.
“Look at yourself truly, king’s daughter,” he said. “Look deep.”
I stared into his eyes and into my own. I saw only my face. Snowflakes fell between us, flaking down to the ground faster and faster despite the fact that the stars still shone high above. I looked into my eyes, but the image in the Winterking’s started to cloud and blur.
Here I stood, terrified and lost in the cold. This ordeal couldn’t end in anything but tragedy for me. I had no home, and my husband would find and kill me before I ever reached the neighboring lords. Weapons would spill my blood on the snow, and I would become one with the frost and dead winter. My body would freeze and break. The snow would claim me.
But maybe… I saw the clearing reflected behind me in the Winterking’s eyes. This wasn’t fairyland. It didn’t feel like that. I’d reached the heart of winter, that was all, and it proved the winter cared for me. The trees and snowflakes had whispered to each other to bring me here, and the Winterking was willing to earn me my revenge on his own feast day. The cold wasn’t warm or comforting, like a broken timbered hall, and yet it surrounded me always. I could trust in the Winter. It already trusted in me.
Two great drifts of snow passed between the Winterking and me, and my once they fell, my vision had changed.
I still saw myself in the Winterking’s eyes, but I was truer than before. My eyes were hard chips of shining ice, brightened in the absence of fear and grief. My hair flowed like living water. A mask of ice froze around my new and beautiful visage, curling outward in intricate loops and sharp angles. It grew up my face, around my neck, into a crown of dagger icicles and an intricate necklace to match.
I touched the side of my face, the bluing skin and spreading ice. I felt the cold still, but not through the pain of human weakness. I was as strong as the frozen wind that sweeps the landscape, as inevitable as the change of the seasons.
“And so it is done,” said the Winterking.
“It is done,” I agreed. My voice was grating ice, like his.
He lowered his head further, so that his antlers surrounded me like a forest in miniature. I realized, now, that he was bowing.
“Welcome, sister,” he said. “Daughter of Winter, called Khione. I hail you.”
I turned. My cloak swirled around my feet in the shimmering snow. The animals knelt and chattered to me in their own tongues, and now I could hear the language they spoke. I raised my eyes to the sky, and the snowflakes fell faster and harder from the vacant space and wealth of stars above. My mind was at peace.
I was Khione. I was Winter, like the Winterking himself, infinite cold and calm and calamity. And I was going to take back what belonged to me, as the season claimed the land and froze it all away.
Fey was perched on a tree, resting after a long day of causing mischief and havoc. It was a cool night and the cold air made her pixie like wings twitch. The sprite let out a sight before looking up to the night sky, for some reason star gazing always seemed to calm her down. But her attention was drawn to something on the ground below.
Well, then. Loki had his attention, which was already a big start on things, and a sense of satisfaction filled the cavities of the God’s ribcage.
“Sir, I believe I have returned properly. Scanning for possible damage to the software, files, data, system—” It was JARVIS’ voice, not Loki’s.
“I did not enjoy speaking through your technological gadgets.” A voice called from behind the human, from his workshop’s door. It was opened. How in the Hell was that opened, it was impossible, he’d have needed his goddamn eyeball— “It made me uncomfortable beyond belief.” He said, almost hissing. “I suggest you to work on that. It is flimsy, and easily accessible. At least, for me.”
They still had business to talk about. Loki still had to ask him for his favour, but he appeared so in hope that speaking face-to-face would make the man see he actually meant his words.
“good. JARVIS keep scanning and keep him locked out.” much as he could keep him locked out of the system. tony didn’t like how fast the god could overtake his tech and that alone served for the anger, bubbling beneath the facade he put up. he’s unsure whether loki was actually, physically present or not, nearly sighing in relief, before the voice caught him off guard.
of course.
it couldn’t have been that easy, could it? tony spins around immediately, hand up, gesturing toward the motion-sensing part of his new suit-- it connects with him in a matter of seconds, arm equipped with a repulsor and aimed at the god. better being careful now, rather than sorry after, despite the fact that loki doesn’t seem hostile. yet.
“duly noted. and visitor hours are thursdays. today’s sunday. now about that favor--”
"it's not that big of a deal," Tony promised him as he grabbed his car keys and checked his phone to be sure Iris hadn't texted him to cancel.
It was always a big step, boyfriend meeting daughter but it was especially important when both were very new to his life, Tony hadn't been good with the whole family aspect in the past and had missed a lot of Iris's life before this he really wanted this to work out now that it seemed it was all coming together whether he was ready or not.
"seriously she is a good kid, she doesn't want anything to do with money, she has a good job, she is pretty brilliant if I say so myself" Tony told him as he leaned against the door frame ready to go meet her.
