Chapter Text
July 1973
They will have to start threshing soon. Half-heartedly stirring in the mashed potatoes, Sansa’s eyes train out the window to ears of grain gleaming golden in the sun.
It’s too hot for mashed potatoes. It’s too hot for the meatloaf she has roasting in the oven, too hot for the beans steaming on a small pot at the other end of the stove. It might be that she’s simply not hungry. She’s seasoned and tasted so much, it took away whatever appetite the heat had left her with.
But heat or not, hungry or not, it’s twenty-five minutes past noon.
She sighs when a light breeze comes through the open window, tilts her head back and closes her eyes. She can’t recall ever experiencing a summer like this. If it’s this bad up here north, surely the South must have evaporated by now. The weather report promised rains since yesterday, but so far there is still not a single cloud on the sky. She knows she shouldn’t complain. It’s great for the grain, and her garden is blooming like it never has; only she feels like she’s wilting.
The patter of bare feet on linoleum lets her open her eyes. She smiles. It only took her one and a half decades, but at last they are all taking their shoes off inside the house. Occasionally.
Jon appears at her side, peaking over her shoulder into the pots and presses a kiss to her cheek.
“Anything I can help with?”
She makes a face when his sweaty cheek presses against hers and wriggles away from him. “You can wash up before lunch, set an example for your kids.”
Laughing Jon pulls damp shoulder length curls together and plucks on the singlet clinging to his chest. “Already did. I sprayed myself down with the garden hose. The water is lukewarm.”
She wipes a hand over her forehead and sighs. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
Fetching the water pitcher from the fridge he nods out the window to the acres of grain. “It will be the best harvest we had in years.” Ice cubes clink as he puts a hand full of them into a glass and hands it to her, pouring water on top. “We’ll have to hurry up with threshing.”
Sansa nods and takes a big sip of water, then presses the glass against her cheeks in turn. “I know. If the weather stays like this while you’re away I will have to call Jeren.”
It will be a bit of a mammoth task taking care of the threshing without Jon, but it wouldn’t be the first time either. She can handle it, as long as Jeren takes over the actual threshing.
Jon puts his empty glass down on the counter, the line over the bridge of his nose deepening. “Maybe it’d be best if we just stayed home.”
“What?”
They turn around and find their son looking at them out of wide eyes.
“But you said we were going,” Robb says, his eyes trained on his father unyielding. “You promised!”
Sansa gives Jon a look that wishes him good luck and hands him a stack of plates. “You did promise.”
“That was before I knew we were going to have this hundred-year summer.” Jon sets the plates down, one on all four sides of the kitchen table. “I know you were looking forward to the fair, but there is another one in Karhold in October. We can always go there instead.”
“You cannot be serious, dad.”
The appearance of their daughter lets Jon send Sansa a look in search for help, but she is otherwise occupied trying to not suffocate from the overwhelmingly hot air that streams out of the open oven door.
“I can’t leave mom alone to handle the threshing all on her own.”
“And why can’t Jeren help, like before?” Alis asks and sinks into her spot at the table, challenge mirroring in dark eyes that look like they’ve been taken straight out of her father’s face.
“We’re growing grain Ali,” Jon tells her. “Not money.”
“That’s so typical.” Everything she says these days comes out in a different octave of a scoff, and every time Sansa misses the lovely little girl with the sweet angelic voice. “There is money for whatever you consider necessary, but if it’s something that would benefit anyone else in the family, we’re expected to step short.”
She’s being unfair, Sansa thinks as she slices the meatloaf. But then again, she is thirteen years old and the whole world seems unfair to her.
“What I consider necessary is what keeps a roof over your head,” Jon says, leaning back in his chair.
He’s a great deal less understanding of the emotions of a teenage girl, but how could he be.
“Yeah, great. A roof I literally never get to leave. This place is like a prison. And now you’re taking away my one chance at furlough.” When Sansa puts the platter with sliced meatloaf on the table Alis turns to her. “Mom, please say something. If we don’t go now, we’ll never go. There will be something else in October, another reason why we have to stay.”
There is a longing shining in her daughter’s eyes. The grand need to leave home, to see something else, be different than her parents. It isn’t too long ago that Sansa had that same longing. Had that same half whining half scoffing tone with her parents; only it feels like a different lifetime.
“I can always call Jeren,” Sansa relents. She overgoes Jon’s worried look and squeezes his shoulder. “Maybe he’ll lower his hour wage if I add a warm meal and a bottle of cider.”
“So then we can go?” Robb looks between the two of them. Her oldest is less direct than his sister, especially when their father is around, but Sansa can see the hope shining in his eyes.
A hope that Sansa shares to a degree. The kids have been looking forward to the fair, and she know Jon has too, but Sansa is sure no one has anticipated it more than she has.
It’ll be a lot of work, yes, but she had a lot of work every day for the past sixteen years.
What she hardly had in those years was time to herself. The house to herself. She can count the occasions where she got to have an uninterrupted bath on the fingers of one hand.
“I’ll be fine,” she assures Jon one more time.
Jon’s shoulders slump and the look he gives her is anything but confident, but he knows if Sansa sides with the kids, he’s fighting on lost ground.
“Okay then.”
.
.
.
Margaery eyes the exterior of the motel from her car, and can’t get herself to get out. Mole’s Town Inn. The name says it all.
Not that she expected much. She hasn’t for a while. It’s never her who gets the interesting locations, the nice hotels, let alone the well-paying jobs.
Another small town in the middle of nowhere, another run-down motel, another job she’s painfully overqualified for. While her mediocre colleagues are staying in three-star hotels, ordering room service on per diem expenses and enjoy the general privilege that comes with having a penis.
She should just turn around. Should just turn the car, drive all the way back and demand the same treatment, the same opportunities her colleagues get. She’s tempted. More than she’s ever been, but she’s also been on the road for fourteen hours today, and there are nearly five thousand kilometres between her and anyone she could yell at.
Making herself the promise that they have done this to her the last time, she pulls the handle and pushes the door open. The wide seams of her pants drag over the dusty unpaved ground as she makes her way to the entrance.
In the registration office, there is a pitiful fan trying to fight the sticky air within the room. Margaery’s finger itch to reach for her camera and to capture in the scene. The way the evening light falls in through the small window, a desk in the background as chaotic as she’s ever seen it. She knows she would be able to capture it, have the heat in the room visible on the picture.
Most fascinating, most worthy to be photographed, is the man behind the counter.
He’s so wrinkled, so hunched, he almost doesn’t look human. It takes Margaery a moment to realise that his eyes are not closed, but clouded. He isn’t the eerie appearance he could be though. There is something comforting, about him. He almost disappears in his strongly starched plait shirt and there is a gentle, warm smile playing on his lips. He looks entirely content.
In that second she’s almost reconciled with being here. Even if it is at the end of the world, even if being here won’t get her on the cover, won’t get her more recognition than a pat on the back. Three star hotels don’t offer sceneries and people like this.
Her own indulgence annoys her. She knows it already, she will curse and cuss her boss with the next job that takes her to another dump, at another end of the world, but she’ll end up going. Having a genuine artistic aspiration to her work, will forever be her weak spot.
“Margaery Tyrell,” she introduces herself. “There should be a reservation for me.”
“The young lady from the Reach.” He gets up onto shaky feet, hands braced against the furniture as he moves. “The photographer?”
“Yes.”
He works his way to the very left side of the counter. When he tries to open a drawer, he has some trouble getting it to open. Laying his entire weight into it he topples and Margaery holds her breath, but he catches himself in a surprisingly agile step.
“And what will you be photographing?” he asks, while spiderlike fingers rummage through the contents of the drawer.
“Castle Black.”
He hums, pushing the wayward drawer closed again, a key with a wooden tag between his gouty fingers. “The ruins you mean.”
She grimaces. “Is the condition really that bad?”
The last pictures she’d been able to get her hands on had been from a decade ago. She’d feared that the hard winters had not improved the condition of the ancient Night Watch’s hold.
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen them in years.” There is a boyish smile on his face as he pushes the key across the counter. “But it’s what people say.”
Restlessness stirs in her. “How far is it from here to Castle Black?”
“About an hour by car.”
She glances at her watch. It’s only eight. She could still make it tonight. Get a first glimpse. Take a few test shots. Castle Black at sunset. The majestic remains of the Wall gleaming in the colours of the sky. It’s tempting.
“The King’s Road is closed though,” the man adds falling back into his chair. “You’ll have to make a detour through the forest.”
That settles her excitement. She hasn’t eaten since this morning. And the cooling box with her film has not been doing a whole lot of cooling for a while now. After her long day, getting lost in the woods is not something she wants to risk. She’ll have all day tomorrow to get lost.
.
.
.
The hint of a line that had been on Jon’s forehead yesterday has grown to a deep crease. He sits on the bed, the open suitcase next to him.
“Sam knows we’re out of town. He’ll come by to see if you need help.”
Sansa’s back is facing him and he can’t see her jaws tensing.
It’s well-meant, she knows that, but she wishes he hadn’t. Or that he would have bothered to ask her. Or, better yet, he should have known better.
It’s not so much Sam coming by. Gilly will know she’s alone and will insist on coming by too.
It’s not that she doesn’t like Gilly. Gilly is a lovely woman. She is the closest thing Sansa has to a best friend, and Sansa owes a lot to her patience and the things she taught her when she first came here. Only in all Sansa had been looking forward to, spending long afternoons at her kitchen table, talking about the kids, and the neighbour’s livestock isn’t high up on her list.
Without an answer she puts two folded up pants into the suitcase. She settles her palm on top of them. “I put your good pants and shirts on top. I want you to take them out and hang them up right after you arrive.”
He gives her a meagre, but affectionate smile. “I’ll be the best dressed farmer in all of White Harbor.”
“There is nothing wrong with being well dressed.”
He won’t wear them, she already knows it. She’ll take them out of the suitcase and put them right back into the closet without having to wash them. The only time he ever wore something that could not also be worn out on the field was on their wedding day, a whole afternoon. It’s not him, not what he’s comfortable in.
His arms close around her waist before she can make her way back to the dresser and he pulls her to sit sideways in his lap. “Are you sure you will be all right here on your own?”
Sansa has a suspicion that it’s not worry for her that motivates this moment of affection. With every year they’re settled here, he’s become more reluctant for any place farther than the town borders of Mole’s Town. White Harbor is so far, he might as well be going to Essos. He’s never enjoyed cities, too many people, too much noise, making him feel out of place.
“I feel like I should ask you that,” she gives back. “You’re the one taking two kids and a cow out on the road for four days.”
They both wouldn’t have minded for Sansa to make the trip with the kids, but taking an almost five hundred kilo live steer there, is more than she deems herself capable of.
He smiles a pained smile and rests his forehead against her shoulder, his lips brushing over her skin. “I already know that I won’t do this again. Ever.”
It sounds like a joke, is supposed to sound like a joke, but she knows it isn’t one.
She runs a hand through thick dark curls, that have been showing the one or other white hair between them lately. She can’t tell him that she’s been looking forward to her time alone. It would hurt him, he’d take it personally, would think that he’s not giving her what she needs, not holding up the promise he made her when they got married.
He is of course. He’s the best husband anyone could ask for. But that doesn’t mean that she isn’t also looking forward to the few days without him. A few days where she can blast her favourite radio station at full volume, keep it on even while she falls asleep. Where she won’t have to put a meal on the table three times a day at set-in-stone times, but simply eat or not eat when she feels like it. Perhaps she can even take the sewing machine out into the garden.
The scruff of his beard scratches as he continues to brush his lips over her skin. She sighs when he smooths the strap of her nightgown aside, and covers her hand with his, pulling away slightly.
“Tonight’s not safe,” she tells him and presses a soft kiss to his lips.
He doesn’t protest when she pushes to her feet, but she averts his eyes, when she goes back to packing, doesn’t want to see the disappointment in them.
.
.
.
Margaery throws herself on the bed and the moment her head rests on the soft pillow and muscles at last lose some of their tension, she knows she won’t be getting up again tonight.
Blindly sifting through her purse for her travel alarm, she eyes a brownish spot in the left corner of the ceiling wearily.
Nevertheless, the room is nicer than the derelict exterior of the building had suggested. It’s old, the furniture looks like it’s twenty years old and worn, but it’s clean and the bed is comfortable enough so that she won’t feel every bone in her body tomorrow. Frugality is a virtue. Or a lack of self-respect, according to her grandmother.
Together with the small alarm clock she fishes her pack of cigarettes out of her purse. She plays with the alarm clock for a moment, setting it from seven to eight and back. It’s barely past nine, and her usual bedtime is a lot later. As great as towns like this one might be from an artistic perspective, those fancy hotels generally come with an urban area close by and something like an evening entertainment.
The local pub where she ate dinner might offer something of the sort, but she’s not in the mood for a bunch of men talking her up, feigning interest in who she is or what she does. And the few women in that pub tonight eyed her like she’d come straight from another planet, wanting to seize command over their world.
Setting the alarm clock aside, Margaery fights the sudden thickness in her throat. She loves travelling, she loves her job, but in these quiet moments in between being on the road and working with her camera, she loves it a little less.