i wrote this ages ago, but figured i'd post this here. originally prompted on tumblr: sansa/jaime - odds and ends

fall in, fall out, fall along

—

—

Sansa Stark sits quietly and smiles.

"Is that all you do?" Jaime asks. His gold hand is heavy and he shifts it so it rests on the table. "Just sit there with your pretty hair and smile at things?"

If she is affronted, she doesn't show it. "I am a simple girl with simple needs." There is a pause. "Ser."

Jaime sits back and regards her with eyes that do not question, eyebrows that do not furrow. Sansa stares back.

—

And she embroiders.

Rose after rose after rose, pinks and reds and sometimes oranges. Pushes the needle and pulls the thread after, a push here, a pull there, a petal blooms.

"Would you like me to make you one?"

That shakes him out of his reverie. He'd been staring. "Oh no, I'm just entertained. The things you do - exciting, aren't they?"

Sansa lowers her head. "They pass the time. I'm a simple—"

"Simple girl with simple needs, yes," Jaime waves his good hand. But she is also the Daughter of the First Men, the Lady in the North.

Well, South now, all things considering.

It's not his duty to linger, but he does. "I wonder how much of the world you've seen."

Even with her eyes lowered, he sees a flash of - something. It's cruel, he knows, his tongue met to puncture, meant to bruise. Maybe she sees her father in the leaves she stitches, slightly askew now. Maybe she sees her sister cowering in corners.

Maybe she doesn't need to see the world. Maybe she's seen enough.

But maybe he's wrong - Sansa holds out her silk handkerchief, smiling. "For you, Ser Jaime."

—

Sansa adorns Margaery's hair with roses.

The Tyrell girl is lively with chatter, and Sansa listens, sometimes laughs. Jaime's seen her laughing before, a lifetime of direwolves ago, in Winterfell. He's struck by how vastly different it sounds now.

How quietly she steps, how quickly she pulls her nose away when she sniffs the roses.

You're walking with a ghost, he wants to tell Margaery.

He would laugh, but it doesn't sound so funny after all.