driftfleet | 01. Oh not this again.

Entry tags:

01. Oh not this again.

Who: Gendry
Broadcast: Nope
Action: SS Golden, Planetside
When: Today and June/July

The Golden

He hadn't been on the Marsiva all that long, but he had been on the vast ship long enough to come to the conclusion he didn't care for it at all. The food was strange and it all reminded him a little too much of the Station, which he'd never really liked all that much in the first place. More than that, he'd noticed how different things were around here. It reminded him of blood granite, though he didn't really mind that part all that much. All that business with Shards had always been an enormous headache equal only to the amount of times he banged his forehead in the tunnels of Troichean Beinn. Still, he hadn't been prepared for being in space. He hadn't figured out how to deal with that, so he'd made the decision not to.

When he arrived on the Golden to fanfare and annoying bits of confetti, the first thing he did was scowl. The second thing he did was find a direction to glare at and then scowl a little bit more. It was not that Gendry was extremely upset, it was just that brooding was something of an art form for him and he was at his best when boiling in sullen silence. All thanks to a bit of a chip in his head, he now knew exactly what he ought to be doing. So after mumbling his greetings to anyone who just so happened to be about to welcome him, he found himself in the engineering room. There were a few tense moments where he tried to grasp exactly what it is he was looking at, why he seemed to know so much about it, and if that was the sort of thing it was worth getting worried about. In the end, he decided that as long as he had valid reasons for hitting, then he might as well get on with it. There was a valve that he could instinctively see needed a great deal of banging, so he did.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

By the time the first native had got around to giving him a reassuring hug, Gendry had concluded that he now knew of three worlds he held a deep contempt for, which coincidentally happened to be all of the ones he'd experienced so far. But it was better than the ship, so he simply took extra care to watch that no one got close enough for any unexpected proximity. After spending a few hours wandering about the market area of one of the primary settlements, Gendry had found exactly where he ought to be. He'd found a smithy and after talking up his own experience (he'd apprenticed with dwarves after all!), he'd found himself gainfully employed and under the incredibly misguided idea that he had simply found a new planet to live on, this was how the rest of his life was going to be, and that he'd better just decide to be happy with it because that's simply how it was.

Rather than engineering as he was supposed to be, Gendry spent quite a lot of time making whatever was required of him, though it generally tended to be of the more mundane tool-like variety. When he wasn't working, he was finding places to buy his meals, trekking back to his private treehouse in an attempt to avoid risky hugs, and not actually paying all that much attention to the forests because he'd only just been in a world chock full of magical forests and this one didn't really seem all that exceptional to him.

(ooc: Gendry will just be here and there, trying to start his life entirely over because this is just the sort of thing that tends to happen to him. Find him at a smith, or out shopping, or trying to shoo little native children from trying to hug his leg because why)

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She mistook him for a native of this planet. And why shouldn't she? He seemed almost like he belonged here with the soil and the bark and the woods. Or maybe she was merely reading a commonness into his behaviour that blended well with this planet's culture. Sansa's eyes narrowed. She held her arms ever-so-slightly away from her body. Keeping balance.

"I don't believe any of us knew we would be here," she answered, guarded. It was the Atroma who decided where her fleet went, and she didn't imagine the locals of any planet knew any better than they did where the Atroma sent them.

It did not greatly surprise him to think that her arrival here was likely involuntary. It had only ever happened the once with the Seelie, but then it was likely just as well if it happened a second time and they fetched up the both of them at the same time. It was a repeat of things already done and he was not nearly as curious about it all as he had been the first time.

"They ain't harmed you any, have they?" This he asked with concern, but not a lot of concern since she'd never really been his responsibility, but even less so now. Though he remembered his courtesies (such as they were) a moment later and added: "M'lady."

She appeared confused. Caught off-guard, at least, by the incisiveness of his question. And yet the locals were all very forward with their curiousity and their affection, so it might be that he's no different -- even if he'd seemed unwilling to entertain the children.

Sansa overcompensated for her confusion by rebuffing his narrow concern: "I'm as well as can be expected. Ser." And then, when she reconsidered throwing him at least a skinny sort of boon: "The trees are very lovely."

Mayhaps the locals liked being complimented on their forest.

Edited 2016-06-26 01:02 (UTC)

Gendry looked at the trees only because he supposed she would expect him to look at them. They were impressive to look at, but their thick trunks and rustling leaves did very little for him. At last he nodded to communicate that yes they were lovely, even if they had both seen far more magical forests in the past.

He turned back to her, regarded the way she was standing, and advanced a step. "Careful you don't fall."

As well as can be expected seemed a particularly barbed comment, so he was trying to ignore it. But he took the meaning of it very plainly.

"I wont," she answered a little too quickly. Making promises she couldn't be certain she could keep. Good balance was a skill she possessed, but rarely did she have to employ it while teetering on a curved, rough tree-root. That seemed more likely to be an Arya skill than a Sansa skill. And thinking about her sister made a pang deep beneath her ribs -- like remembering that she must have somewhere to be, and family to attend to. Not strangers to stare down.

And yet his advanced step seemed to make her wobble. A hint of trepidation, mixed with an emotion that flirted with the edge of fear. "I promise."

A wobble was as good an invitation to step closer. It was not that a fall would cause some significant injury, but he'd long imagined her as being the sort of woman who'd taken enough beatings. He'd stopped catching her a year ago, but things had changed very rapidly.

"That's not an easy promise, m'lady."

Something was wrong. She could as good as sniff it on the air -- taste it when she wet her lips. And Sansa didn't like the way he walked nearer 'her' root. For a moment, the wobbling stopped...and she raised one hand, an empty palm, and wordlessly bid him to halt. Her body language screamed what she didn't say aloud. Come no closer.

Instead, softer: "And yet I will keep it, ser. I keep my promises."

She was an acrobat in her lies, if in little else.

Edited 2016-06-26 01:16 (UTC)

If there was one thing Gendry had learned in all his time of knowing her, it was that there was absolutely no use in believing her. That had evolved from a general mistrust of all highborns, but had eventually settled into a kind of understanding of the why she needed to be so nimble around the truth. It never stopped bothering him when she played loosely with the truth, but he barely regarded this little lie at all.

He stopped, only to cross his arms and regard her with mild disapproval. "Don't be stupid."

No, her lies were never iron-clad. She had been told us much -- that King's Landing was filled with liars, and all of them better than her. But she'd thought herself clever enough to out-fib some common local on some unknown planet. And even if not, she'd never anticipated the opposite being so bluntly put to words. Her nose wrinkled. She looked down on him from her sloped tree-root, as it gave her the barest stretch of higher ground.

"You forget yourself, ser," she spoke with ice in her words. "I did not expect the inhabitants of this planet to be so rude."

Bold words for a people-pleasure, perhaps. But she had drawn her arms close and clasped her hands together in an effort to have her thumb closer to the device on her wrist, in case she needed it.

Gendry snorted derisively and was entirely put off at being grouped in with the other inhabitants of the planet, even if he'd already made the conclusion he was probably going to be living the rest of his life. "I ain't some grubby-handed hugging blighter."

He was rude and he was well aware of it. She might have tried to inspire some social graces in him before, but a year working underground along dwarves had dulled all sense of propriety and courtesy back to his previous state. He might have remembered all of that, but he simply had no interest in calling upon it. "And you know I ain't no local."

At least not yet. There hadn't been time for that.

What a puzzle. Was this some game played by the Atroma? Some fresh test, like when she'd gotten lost in the dreams of other people? Sansa hesitated on activating her talking device -- delaying that, now, for a moment while she tried to pry apart the mystery.

She could have made demands. She could have made claims. But mostly, she was scared and feeling lost inside a mystery. So her voice was small when she asked: "...Do you know me?"

Because she most certainly did not know him -- apart from a passing familiarity with a dead man's face. But that must be mere coincidence.

He stood motionless, repeating that small and simple question in his mind. It was simply not something he was prepared to deal with. There had been times in the Drabwurld where people had gone and vanished, only to return later not remembering things. But those had been such fleeting things and it had never been anyone he'd known well enough to get and well and truly upset about. This was different, though. He was forgotten by someone who shouldn't have forgotten him. He had saved her life! More than once! Where, he had to wonder, might she have ended without him?

The answer was obvious on his face, written in the confused lines along his brow. Without thinking, he did nothing to confirm or deny what he knew, but instead inquired about what he'd heard.

"What?"

She appeared ever so slightly vexed. Standing oh-so-still and begging herself, internally, not to allow a single wobble, Sansa repeated her question. "Do you know me, ser?"

But this time, she said it more slowly -- as though she anticipated some deficiency of sense or intellect might have gotten in the way the first time.

Yes, he might have said. Don't you know me? sprang to mind. How could you forget! he may very well have accused. But what he did was lock his jaw and spend what seemed a gut wrenchingly long time studying her features for the lie. He had gotten so good at spotting them, that he had assumed that she could never fool them.

But he didn't see it. There was no lie and there was no deception. If that was the case, then mayhaps... she'd believe his.

He shook his head at first, but had to lower his head because he wouldn't be able to look her in the eye. "No. Seems not."

Edited 2016-06-26 01:44 (UTC)

She could lie as easily as she breathed! But she could tell, too, that he was rotten at it. The moment he looked aside, looked down, she could see the cracks in what he was trying to say. However bold and idiotic it might have been to call a proper lady stupid on a bustling planet, it had clearly sprang from a place of familiarity. Like how Arya said it. Yes, it struck her very firmly like Arya's taunting.

Sansa was caught between pressing her investigation, and relenting. In the end, she settled for half-measures. "A-are you a passenger in the fleet, then? Another ward of the Atroma?"

The name of Atroma was the sort of thing he had picked up in passing, but had been very much lost in the enormity of all the other things he had been hearing at the same time. It was a meaningless word, tossed against a tapestry of all the other things that were plaguing his thoughts right now. Chiefly, he wanted to leave. But he couldn't well just walk away without giving her some sort of answer. He scowled at the ground.

"I've left the fleet," he explained. "I ain't got no use for iron ships and stars. I'll stay here."

Edited 2016-06-26 01:52 (UTC)

"They won't let you," she cautioned. At first blush, it appeared almost like concern. Scratch the surface, and there's only a selfish desire to take the wind from his sails. He called her stupid. And then failed to adequately hide a secret -- he knew her, somehow, she's certain of it. "They won't let any of us leave. You're stuck."

It was an absurd warning. They had loosed him on an entire planet, with any direction he might travel. While he'd never been able to leave the Drabwurld, he'd been free to go any direction he'd liked. That had been at the hands of strange fairy-god-people who were uncomfortably interested in trying to out-murder one another. He didn't believe her, but only out of reflex.

"They ain't stopped me yet. And if they do, it makes no matter to you." The subtle accusation was present in his voice, even if not in his actions. He was still standing there, seemingly unwilling to just walk away and be done with it. None of this should even matter to him. He'd arrived on this planet not expecting to see any of the people he'd abandoned a year ago, so he shouldn't be at all dismayed if they simply abandoned him back.

He was hurt. Whatever she'd done -- and she cannot fathom what she might have done -- it had stung him. She knew a man's bruised sentiments when she saw them, having learned at Petyr's right hand how to use those bruises to her advantage. Indeed, she'd worked that very magic on the day she met Harry the Heir. But she knew no magic to work on this stranger, and barely knew whether she should make the attempt to assuage whatever insult she'd caused.

"It would matter to me if you somehow dodged their leads and escape them," she countered -- but weakly. Her eyes look over his head, as though looking for someone else in the crowd. Looking for someone safe.

"No one else has."

That was the kind of concern he had absolutely no use for. He resented it for how it meant that the only concern should be the implications of success and what it might mean for her and others. He began to turn, even if it might meant walking back the way he'd come rather than to carry on to his destination.

"Might be I will." He paused, halting his departure if only because there was at least someone he knew he ought to be asking. "Arya. Did they fetch her too?"

Even if she forgot everything about the Drabwurld, she might still at least know him.

"Arya?" Surprised, her eyebrows flew upward. Of course, he knew Arya. And herself, then, by association only. "Yes. She's newly here. And --"

And Jon and Robb and Bran. But her litany of Starks and one Snow was interrupted by the sudden, soft-wet thud against her back. The children from before were back, but had now clambered up to a higher branch -- hanging out the window of a treehouse, they were snickering and clapping each other on the shoulder. The eldest had thrown his half-eaten fruit at her. Not maliciously, he would say if caught and pressed, but because he thought upsetting the young woman with the long copper hair might force her to fall. And if she fell, she might take the grumpy young man's hand. And that, the child thought, would benefit them both.

With a sound of choked horror, she did indeed teeter. Her slippered heel slid on the dry bark, and her foot lost its purchase. Sansa went tumbling downward to the leaves and the detritus and the dirt on the ground below, landing in a heap of blue silk.

For his part, Gendry had not yet mastered the timely and honed Dad reflexes known for their tremendous power of injury prevention. He had only just started to turn back around when she had started to fall. Gravity was quicker than he was, though he did not hesitate to kneel next to her. She might not be the same person he knew, but he was very much unchanged and some instincts don't simply go away.

"Sansa," he said sharply. "Are you hurt?"

She was unharmed. Her sense-of-self might have been ruffled, and she might wake tomorrow with a bruise or three, but no lasting damage was done. Nothing worth too much fuss. And yet the stranger hurried to a knee, and said her name like a friend might. Like family might. It was her name that dazed her more than the fall. Already exhausted (emotionally; not physically), she leaned her head back against the root she'd so recently vacated.

"Yes. No. Not a lot." She only fell. Children fell all the time, and they laughed it off. In fact, she could hear children's laughter floating down from up above, and she eyed their grinning faces with sulky judgement. After a moment, they disappeared. Back into the tree-tops.

"Who are you?" He might be a stranger, but she was a proper lady and she'd taken a tumble. So she held out a stiff hand for help back onto her feet. She wasn't so boldly independent as to try standing all on her own. Doubtless, had she tried, she'd trip and fall again and be even more of a laughing stock.

But, she noticed, he didn't laugh.

He'd given to giving the children a well practiced scowl, up until the moment they'd fled. This hadn't accomplished much, since they'd long proven they didn't seem particularly troubled at his presence. When his attention returned to her, he did so without actually looking at her.

"Gendry." He didn't bother with Ser and certainly made no effort to call himself Baratheon, because that meant so little to him. A year ago he'd stopped trying to elevate himself enough to try and appeal to her, so there seemed little point in starting all over again.

He clasped her hand and stood to hoist her back to her feet.

A funny thing happened. She put her bare hand in his -- felt his callouses -- and felt on some level repulsed by them. But as he helped her up, she might have sworn he smelled like snow. Sansa knew a little about this planet, and about the friendly warnings given about holding hands while on its surface, but it was such a strange phenomenon that she'd hardly paid it any mind. Even now, she was more caught up in turning her head and catching a whiff of freshly fallen snow. How unexpected! It would have been charming, were she not already so wary.

"Gendry," she repeated. And it was clear she did not know the name at all. But when she spoke it, it tasted like mint. It tastes like something else: bitter, sweet, and dark. Like the fake chocolate flavouring back on the Blue Fish. But much much better.

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