abraxaslogs | Open Log - I feel like I should be cackling

For a moment, when Sansa spoke those words, it felt like no one else understood him just as much as she did. Which words? Any of them. All of them. Something in those words and sounds echoed into his heart, ringing true. Words spoken by someone who lived something similar, who knew, who understood.

"I don't know. I mean, I know I didn't survive." That was a weird phrase to hear coming out of his mouth. "I remember just......"Chris didn't finish that sentence. It was too weird. Too new. " Mom was in labor though so....I guess I really don't know what happens. I'm dead, but I might not be? I hope that we figured everything out in time. That my father was able to complete what I started." And that he wasn't doomed to repeat this cycle, dying right before he was born.

"I really wish you didn't have to learn that lesson too. I was so certain who it could be. I had lists. I thought I covered all my bases. Except the people I trusted. I guess my aunt had those statistics right after all. Something about 50% of violent crimes being perpetrated by someone the victim knows." Thanks so much Phoebe. She was right after all. He was looking in all the wrong places.

Edited (Sorry! <3 I had to add his potential birth too) 2024-09-26 21:12 (UTC)

"Vipers like to nest where it's warm," Sansa says. "I have known my fair share of them. I never wish that upon someone else, though, because no one should have to live their life looking over their shoulder waiting for the knife to stab them in the back."

Westeros is like that, in her experience, and while some people are more subtle than others even the subtle knife cuts deep. Sansa thinks she's rooted out all such corruption from the North but time will tell.

"You are here now and we cannot do anything about our situations at home. It is both a relief and a vex at the same time. I feel as if I have left so many things undone."

The problem was Sansa, by these definitions? Chris was a viper too. Just as much of a problem as Gideon. It just depended on your point of view. He got an odd look on his face, wondering if it counted if it was pre-emptive self defense. Chris took a small step back from her, as if his own experiences might harm her. Or she him.

Then he was back, dismissing it from his mind. Fuck that. He'd done the right thing. The world mattered more. His family mattered more. And if Wyatt was safe? He'd never know.

"I'm not real good at letting go, Sansa." Then again, wasn't that his assignment from Crane? Go have fun?

"Have you figured it out yet?" Maybe she could teach him.

"Letting go is not my strongest suit," Sansa admits. "You hold onto your pain for so long that it becomes hard as ice and twice as difficult to melt. The only way to truly be at peace is to let yourself feel once more and know that it is safe to do so, that harm will not come to you. It is something I must think about every day."

Sansa isn't certain if she can ever let go of her pain no matter how much she wishes to but she does find it a bit easier here in this place where she matters little to anyone else. She is no queen, no noblewoman, no Stark. She is simply Sansa without expectation.

"Eventually, though, all ice must thaw. That is the way of things. I am trying to thaw each and every day."

"Maybe I should be going to you for therapy instead of Crane," Chris laughed softly. She was right. Granted, Crane had said pretty much the same thing. And then told him in a polite way to suck it up buttercup. Sansa understood though. In a way that validated what he was feeling with her own experiences.

"I've been on for so long, I'm not sure I know what it feels like to thaw." He thought maybe she understood what it was like. To be on guard for so long that nothing else feels right. But, here he still had to be on guard right? For Sansa? And then rest of his charges? Could he really still relax? He flexed his fingers, struck with a sudden urge to reach out to hold her hand but stayed.

"I think I should get you back to your brother. He might be wondering where you are." He didn't want her to leave.

Edited (i needed a new icon) 2024-09-27 23:04 (UTC)

"My brother is likely busy," Sansa says. "He often escorts me here to Nocwich and then goes to visit his friends from other territories. It is relatively safe, after all, and I have others that I can go to if something happens. I shouldn't interrupt him, truly, because he gets so little time to see his friends from Solvunn and the Free Cities."

Sansa doesn't want to go either, even if she likely should. They will have a few days in Nocwich after all and she has occasionally stayed over in the town and not returned to Thorne after spending the day there.

"Provided I have an escort, I should be quite safe, and I appear to have one currently."

"Oh," Chris hoped he didn't sound ever so happy about that. "I thought your brother....." what was the polite way of saying stalking? "Followed you a bit more closely than that. " But Chris wasn't real familiar with the term 'escort' unless it was being used in a sex worker type of way. Or in a 'police escort' sort of way. Maybe that was the way she meant it?

"So, you're brother just wants you to have a companion when you're away from him?" Chris was trying to break it down into the lowest possible terms because, he was quite sure they were from very, very, very different worlds and he was so confused. Also, why was her brother sticking his nose in it? Because Sansa didn't trust herself to keep herself safe? Or he didn't? Did this have something to do with that marriage she had talked about? The guy was dead.

He was so confused, Sansa.

"Okay...where would you like to go?"

"My brother provides an escort for my safety," Sansa explains. "No matter the place, men are terrible and cruel at times and beautiful women are usually unsafe when traveling alone. I was particularly unsafe back home because I was a queen with a large territory and while I am unknown here, I am still a woman and still at risk of the dangers that come with being born one. My brother likes for me to have an escort, yes, but..."

Sansa sighs a little and tries to decide how best to explain it.

"I am frightened to be without protection. Provided I am with someone that I trust, I do not mind being away from Jon and honestly, he does deserve a break from me. No man wants to be hampered by his sister all hours of day and night. As it is, I would like to go have tea with you. There is a place called the Ivory Bloom. It is a bit out of the way but the tea is very good."

Chris was doing his best to understand where she was coming from, but the first thoughts that popped into his head where 'what the fuck?' And then she admitted to being frightened and his entire demeanor changed. Which he should have figured out if he had been paying attention. He was still new to this whitelighter thing.

"Okay, first of all, being a woman doesn't mean you can't still kick ass. Trust me, I come from a long, long line of very powerful women, and none of them needed a man to get anything done. My great grandmother was actually disappointed when my mother had boys. And while we're at it," Because Chris was nothing if not a nag, " no one is hampered by anyone, least of all you. I'm sure Jon doesn't feel stuck with you at all. That's what family is for."

He held out his hand, if she wanted to take it. "But, I'd be happy to escort you. I'd hate for you to be afraid, no one deserves that. I think I'd love to have cup of tea with you, Sansa." Despite everything, he smiles softly at her, and then with a small laugh adds, "Also, I did just give you an explosive."

Sansa takes his hand and nods once. "You did, in fact, give me an explosive and those do not particularly exist in Westeros. Wildfyre explodes but it no longer exists and we do not know the recipe to make more, thank the Old Gods and the New."

"As to women being able to fight, I am aware that they can. My sister is an assassin and I know a knight who is a woman. I am not a fighter, Chris. I barely know how to hold a knife and I would not know what to do with a bow. My strengths lie with my mind and my ability to strategize, not my ability to fight. I am more suited to flee from danger than face it head on. I should practice running, I suppose, but it is difficult to run in heavy skirts."

"I suppose that makes two of us. My entire family is good in a fight, but it's not where I'm strongest. Give me a bit of time and I can make a potion. Last time someone handed me a sword I got disarmed in less than 10 seconds." Aren't you glad you're putting your trust in someone with such fighting skills Sansa? "Maybe we should start a running club."

Then Chris clocked what she had said, and was putting together the pieces of what her world might have looked like. Queen, knight, bow. Oooooh. Okay, he was slow sometimes. He looked at her for more than a moment, like he was trying to figure out her measurements beneath the layers and layers of fabric she had wrapped around her. Exactly how much did that dress weigh anyway?

Wrapping his hand around hers, he took a few steps, hoping he was going in the right direction of where ever that tea shop was. "I promise, though, I can and will protect you." If he could take passengers, it would be a whole lot easier, but he'd have to think his way through anything. Or telekinetically shove them through a wall. That worked too.

"It helps that no one is allowed into Nocwich with a weapon," Sansa says, guiding him toward the tea shop. It makes her more comfortable about being here even if she can still be easily overpowered by someone taller and stronger than she is. Without weapons, she at least gets a chance to run away.

"I was told by someone once to think about every enemy, all the time, both in my mind and not. It makes you a very wary person and makes it so you don't trust anyone at all. You're quite safe, of course, but you're also quite lonely."

"People don't need a weapon to be dangerous. They are fully capable of being horrible all on their own." At least here, if either of them needed too, there were things they could use, make their environment work for them. Stalls, items to throw, chairs and tables. Buildings to duck around and in.

Chris followed her as she guided him, trying to memorize the details as he went, keeping an eye on those around them. It wasn't that he didn't trust anyone...no, no, that was exactly it. He didn't trust.

"Yes, it is. I made lists, and lists of enemies. And even in the end, I didn't get all of them. But it did make us safer. But no one wants to spend time with someone who can't see anything else." He spoke from experience. His own family had told him they hated him, to get a life, that they never wanted to see him again. Until they realized.

Which just made it worse. He curled his fingers around hers, wanted to stop and pull her close for a kiss, but not daring. Instead, he just concentrated on the feel of her fingers against his, the feel of his heart hammering against his chest at the thought of her.

"Sometimes we try our best and fail." Sansa enjoys holding his hand, which surprises her. Normally she is wary of new people and doesn't trust them, only building trust after a while but Chris shares so many things with her in spite of being from a different time entirely and she does trust him.

The tea shop, while out of the way, doesn't take all that long to get to and she leads him up the few steps to get inside.

"I think they have something called coffee as well but they do not have that at home so I have never tried it for myself."

Despite entering the shop, Chris is loathe to let go of her hand. It feels good nestled in his own, and he realizes just how long it's been since he had any physical contact. That he'd been so busy trying to take care of everyone else that he forgot about himself.

Again.

Go figure. At least this time he didn't almost cease to exist.

So, Chris doesn't let go of his hand, but instead guides them inside, enjoying the feeling of her touch while he can.

"They have coffee?" Was that fervor in his voice? The Halliwells were addicts okay? It'd been a really, really long time. Okay, it'd been like 3 weeks. Which was an enormous time for a coffee addict. "Coffee is delicious Sansa. What do you normally drink?"

"I drink a spiced tea. I think they call it chai. It seems as if it would keep you quite warm in a cold place like my home," she says, laughing a little. He hasn't dropped her hand and she doesn't drop it either and finds that she does not want to. Any physical contact she has is light and brief aside from a hug from Jon occasionally so this is novel to her.

"I wouldn't suppose you've ever had that, have you? I had never heard of it before I came to this place."

Is she smiling? She never smiles.

"Oh, yeah I've had chai before. It's good. I just come from a long line of coffee addicts." Catching the eye of of the shopkeep or barista or whatever they wanted to be called here, Chris ordered a cappuccino for himself and a chai for Sansa, glancing at her to make sure he got it right and she didn't want to change her mind and try something new.

Keeping a grip on her hand, he ventures a small, almost shy smile at her, before leading her over to an empty table. Remembering she was a queen or something, he took a moment to pull her chair out, even though he had to let go of her hand to do it. Also, Leo was born in 1920. He'd kill Chris if he didn't.

"What did you drink back home?"

"Tea from a place called the Reach, which you will not know of," Sansa says. "It is the part of Westeros that grows everything green for the rest of it. Where I come from, we mine and export lumber and leather. It is plain, however, and I usually put honey in it. It...is difficult to come from a place where things cannot grow. It makes us hardier as a result."

Sansa curls her hands around her cup and tries to decide how she can reach for his hand again without being obvious about it. This has never happened to her, really; in Westeros, she has only ever been married off. This is different and a bit frightening.

"I've grown so used to the cold that I fear I have become an ice maiden."

Chris found his hand reaching across the table as an offering, hand open, palm up. He wasn't ready to let her go, even if it was just sitting quietly at the opposite end of a small table. Obvious? Yes. Did he care? Not really. It was nice having someone who seemed to like him for him, and not what he could do or who he was related too.

He shook his head at her words. "You don't look that cold to me. There's a difference between not wanting to be hurt and just not wanting." He pushed his cup toward her with his other hand, offering. "Here, give it a try. Tell me what you think. It's got some frothed milk on top."

Her home sounded. Inhospitable. And they didn't even have coffee to make up for it.

He offers his hand and Sansa thinks for a moment before she touches it again, pressing her palm against his. She wore gloves at Winterfell and now having bare hands is so novel and different - especially when she hasn't touched anyone in longer than she can remember. Not a touch she wanted, anyway.

He offers his drink and she takes a sip. It takes her a moment to decide if she likes it but unlike the ale at the Wall, this drink is one she likes.

"It is...different but I think I like it. I wish we had this at home. I think it would keep me quite warm in Winterfell."

It takes every ounce of will Chris has not to take her hand and press her wrist to his lips, to inhale her scent and memorize it. Instead, he just listens, smiles, and curls his other hand around his cup again, taking a small sip, lips sipping over where Sansa had.

"It keeps us quite warm in San Francisco too. Just don't drink too much of it or you wont sleep."

He watches her, trying to remember the last time he felt so head over heals with someone. Wondering how badly they'd stop him at the portal if he tried to follow her into Thorne and just how much trouble he'd get. Chris felt like a stupid cartoon character with their heart literally hammering outside of their chest.

Maybe it was just the coffee. He swallowed roughly. Not the coffee.

"It sound quite cold in your home. Weather is a lot more mild in California." Nope. He had to put a stop to this. Weather. The date killer.

"You said your sister was an assassin." Nope, now was not the time to bring up 'so was my fiancée'. SIGH try again Chris. "What's your family like? Is your brother the only one here?"

"There were five of us trueborn. Jon and I do not share a mother," Sansa explains. It is more complicated than that but for all intents and purposes, Jon is her brother. He is her blood, a Stark, and she will always see him as one after what they've been through together.

"He is the only one of my family here. I had three brothers and a sister. My sister lives, as does one of my brothers. Arya was trained by the best assassins in the world. She is...not like me. She is very strong in ways that I am not. Still, I survived my trials the same as she did hers."

Sansa dips her head a bit and smiles. "Arya looks more like Jon than I do. I favor my mother. Starks are normally dark-haired, you see. I imagine I am one of the few red-haired Starks that ever lived."

"That sounds a little like my own family actually. I have a bigger family too." Or did before Wyatt murdered them all. " But my aunt, Paige, has a different father. Halliwells are...kind of matrilineal." He was going to ask what trueborn meant, except he figured it out, assuming Jon's situation was kind of like Paige's.

"I don't know if everyone's still alive. I guess it depends on what time everyone's from. I'm from a future where things didn't turn out great." That was kind of the world's biggest under exaggeration ever. Wyatt took over the world both mundane and magical, murdered his entire family and Chris said 'it wasn't great'.

"Halliwells are dark haired too. Except for my brother, and my aunt Paige. She has hair like yours but, hers is dyed." Paige was going to kill him for spilling her secret.

Chris sighed, pressing his hang up against hers. "I'm sorry about your other brother." He knew what it was like to lose family. Leo had never been around. Piper was dead. Phoebe was dead. Paige was dead. His grandfather Victor was dead. Bianca. His other cousins, Tamara and Kat, PJ and Peyton. He was running out of fingers to count the losses.

"You seem really close to Jon."

"My family died because of war. In a way, perhaps, to get to me because I am the weakest and easiest to overcome. Jon...Jon is some of the only family that I have left. I suppose that is why we are so close now. I trust him more than anyone. He protects me because I cannot protect myself."

Sansa frowns softly.

"My world is different from this one," she says. "It is different from the places that others come from, too, and sometimes I wish I had been born in one of those places. The things I am able to do are not very useful, I think. I am only just learning magic and I cannot fight. I sew and sell the things I make but I don't think sewing is a particularly useful thing when the wolves are at the door."

Chris looked down, trying to figure out how to put what he was feeling into words. To share without minimizing her own story. To show he understood. "My brother orchestrated the deaths of my entire family. He left me alive because....I don't know. I'm not worth it. I wasn't a threat." Then he looked up, realizing for a moment that maybe Wyatt was wrong. He was strong in the same way that Sansa was. They had brains.

"Just because we're the easiest to overcome physically doesn't mean we're not formidable. It means we're using other strengths to win in a fight. My brother let me live, and he realized too late what a mistake that was." Even if Chris was dead. He maybe, just maybe, caused a ripple effect that would change things. He hoped. He had to hope it wasn't all for nothing.

"And I know I just said I wasn't great at fighting but, if Jon isn't around, I will be. Weapons aren't the only way to fight." Chris telekinetically pushed her tea a little closer to her. "Sewing is quite useful if you're sewing the right things. Like. Poppets. With the right spell and a good poppet, you can take someone down from the safety of your own home."

It was more sneaky, but brute force wasn't always the way to go. Chris had to realize that long ago. It was pretty useless against Wyatt.

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