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

"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.

"I do not know that sort of magic," Sansa says. "But I would be willing to learn it if it is possible here. As to your brother - his choices were poor. Power for power's sake is never something to seek. You will always hunger for more and be left with nothing in the end."

Sansa bites her lip a little. "I survived because I bend under pressure, I do not break. No one could break me. They all tried, of course, in their ways, but no one could break me. I will never break beneath a m...beneath a person again. I will never marry again unless I choose. I will have my own choices."

Sansa doesn't move her hand, though, and making her own choices seems to be nice.

Chris definitely caught that and was putting the pieces together of Sansa's life a little faster now. He makes an effort to keep his hand beneath hers relaxed. His coffee cup though? That exploded.

He was going to find whoever touched Sansa, and make them pay. How was he going to find him? The details there were a little bit sketchy. He hadn't exactly mastered time portals much less going to other worlds but. He had a mission now. Orb the testicles and penis of the guy who touched Sansa into the nearest volcano. That was a plan.

"Shit, are you okay?" Great job Chris, great job. Sansa opens up to you, you explode the cup that could have hurt her. Bang up job you're doing there.

He took a deep breath, trying to salvage the situation. "You deserve so much better Sansa. No one deserves to be treated like that. You deserve to be able to make your own choices and be treated with kindness and respect." He was going to kill him. Every single person who looked at her wrong.

Sansa gasps a little when the cup explodes and pulls away for a moment. It's a shock, to be certain, but people have different magic than she does and perhaps this is what Chris is good at besides appearing out of nowhere and making potions.

"Sorry, I think I'm all right. Just a bit shocked, is all. Arranged marriages are...common where I come from and especially when you have a particularly important claim of land such as I have. I know that isn't the case in other places where people have love matches."

She looks at the shards of the cup. "I wouldn't suppose you can repair that, no? I can only make ice."

Sansa thought that was bad, she should see what Piper did when she got upset. Okay, the important thing was that she only pulled back for a moment. She hasn't run away screaming.

Still, he arched an eyebrow as she continued talking. Arranged marriages? Bullshit. So, he was going to kill everyone later. "Sorry, I usually have better control than that. But that's...no that's not normal." In any sense of the word Sansa. Were they going to have to have a talk about consent? He took a deep, deep breath and then took another one, trying not to see red.

"The cup. Right. Actually....yeah I can fix it." He gave her a smile. "Maybe then you can fill it with ice." It took him a minute to come up with a spell, but a moment later the cup's pieces rematerialized together, complete and whole. Was fixing a cup to impress a girl really bad personal gain?

"It sounds like you haven't been treated with respect and love. Or with even the smallest amount of consent. Where I'm from? That's not right. And for the record, there's a difference between arranged marriages and being treated like an object."

Edited (english) 2024-09-29 01:57 (UTC)

"I have always been a pretty object, Chris. I am a little bird meant to sing on command, a perfect bride. It is only now that I am able to live freely. I know this isn't how things are where you come from or where many people come from but it is the way of the world for me. What I have achieved, I have done through...well, I suppose it matters little. I am a queen now and in charge of my own destiny. Which...Jon does not know. It is a grave secret I trust you with," she says.

"To know his future is to know pain I would protect him from. He is my brother. I will not see him suffer for something that has not come to pass for him. I think I ruined this, however."

Sansa reaches over and waves her hand over the cup, filling it with snow.

"Perhaps that is a better topic of conversation. All the magic I have learned involves ice. Ice for an ice queen?"

"I won't tell your brother, you have my word." Chris also noticed how easily Sansa switched personalities. Survival mechanism? He had done the same thing, over and over. It was just really creepy to see played out right in front of him. "The important thing is you're here now. You're not subject to the same rules, right? No one here can make you do anything."

He did not want to change the conversation topic. He wanted a detailed list of everyone in her life who had ever made her do anything. Everyone who had ever hurt her. Because it seemed to him like she was okay with it.

"Ice because your homeland is so cold or ice because you think you're a pretty ice sculpture?" He stopped, trying to let his anger dissipate. "You don't ruin anything Sana."

"Ice because Winterfell is full of ice, I imagine, but I am also cold as well," Sansa says. "We talked of thawing, bit by bit. I think the gods of this place find themselves amusing giving me only ice when most of the people I know, including Jon, can control fire instead. Ice is not quite as useful except, perhaps, to freeze a person in their steps."

Sansa tentatively reaches out to touch his hand again.

"I did ruin this by talking about my past. I should have kept it secret. I usually keep it secret, actually, but you are surprisingly easy to talk to. None of the things I have shared with you must be shared with anyone else. They are weaknesses of mine and show that I am fragile as birds' wings."

"You haven't ruined anything," Chris repeats. She doesn't seem to get that it's not her fault. And Chris? Chris is mad that she's not more angry. But he's used to the Halliwells who seem to run a fair bit hotter. He completes the movement and reaches out for her hand as well, letting their skin touch again.

"Please don't feel you need to keep secrets from me. You don't. I wont tell anyone." That was one thing he learned at least. Whitelighter-Charge confidentiality. "I just, you deserve so much more Sansa. I want you to want more. You're not weak." He remembered how his own mother thought she was weak, how she grew from a scarred girl into a confident woman, to one of the most powerful witches in the world.

But, that did give him an idea. Probably not a great one but...."Have you tried freezing people? I mean. With ice. I mean, people have a hard time moving with hypothermia."

"I am powerful in a way that is not useful to me here," Sansa says. "My name means nothing in Thorne and I wear no crown. I am no one, for once, and it is somewhat freeing. It feels as if people can actually know me for who I am and not want me for a castle and a swath of land."

Sansa gives him a soft smile.

"I have not had cause to freeze anyone here so I have not used it as a weapon. I have only ever practiced with it. I wouldn't imagine you would want me to freeze you for the sheer thrill of it."

He was going to convince this woman she wasn't a beautiful object if it was the last thing he freaking did. Still, he knew what she meant. "I may not have a crown but I do kind of know what you mean. My last name doesn't mean a hell of a lot here, no one wants me for who I'm related to or what I can do. And for the record, you are more than happy to try and freeze me. I'm hardier than I look. Besides, no one's tried to kill me in over a month and I think I'm out of practice."

Was he joking? No, no he wasn't joking, he was truly happy for her to try and freeze him. Especially if it means she gets practice defending herself. Chris moved his fingers against hers, enjoying feeling the skin and warmth.

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