บท 38: Roots
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Roots
Her words hit him like a collapsing avalanche, and all Ramsay could do was stare at Sansa in shocked horror unsure if what he'd just heard was reality or a figment of his imagination. As the impact of the revelation subsided, an immediate rage coursed through him. Betrayal swirled and cinched at his heart to know that Sansa had gone off to meet with his mother against his wishes (even if not said implicitly the implication had been made.) What Sansa had done was far worse than bringing the past back up again; she had excavated it to manifest from a memory into pointed action. What did she hope to garner from communicating with that cunt? Was she looking for ways to hurt him further than the physical pain and humiliation she'd already put upon him by drudging up a person he'd rather forget?
Ramsay's jaw cemented tightly baring his teeth as his body became rigid. He hadn't spoken other than his exclamation of initial surprise when Sansa had announced her tidings, but his fury was evident in the glare he penetrated her with. Recoiling from Sansa's handhold, Ramsay abruptly stood with shaking clenched fists. It was the first time since this new relationship between them had formulated that he'd felt anything beyond adoration for Sansa or fear of her reprisal should he upset her. The impulse surged within Ramsay then to slap her for such an insult (the instantaneous reaction he would have taken had he have been the man he was prior to Sansa's unique conditioning.) He was furious, but Ramsay wasn't so bold as to react on his anger with physical violence anymore. That man was a fading memory to whom Ramsay had become, but the hurt of this discovery was too palpable for him not to let some of his roiling emotions override the common sense within him warning Ramsay to dial back his feelings and approach this conversation rationally. To Sansa's immediate surprise, he snarled rancorously clenching his fists in his barely contained rage, "How dare you! You… you would slither around me like a treacherous snake to seek her out behind my back! To what purpose did it serve you?!"
Seeing the shift in Ramsay's mood, Temeric and Cecil stepped forward quickly flanking Ramsay with a stiff stance and a cautious air. Unlike with Jon, they would take no chances of this argument becoming a physical altercation and stood ready to respond should words escalate into a potential threat where their Lady could be harmed. Ramsay noted the guards preparing actions to take him down and shot both men a withering glower as silent affirmation that their advance was observed to be a slight to his person.
Sansa was staggered by Ramsay's negative reaction, but once she'd regained her composure, she rose from the Weirtree's roots taking swift strides to close the gap Ramsay had created between them. Sansa purposefully towered over him making a point to both him and herself that his volatile response did not frighten her. Her actions belied the inner turmoil she felt though as Sansa was in fact incredibly afraid, not because Ramsay could possibly strike out at her, but because she realized that slipping off to secretly meet his mother could make it hard for Ramsay to forgive and trust her again. It was no secret to Sansa that his trust in her was paramount to his rehabilitation and the furtherance of their continued relationship. She had anticipated that Ramsay would be unhappy to find out where she'd gone, but Sansa had no idea just how outraged he would become. From her previous worry though, she had had an inkling even if his reaction exceeded her expectation.
Regardless of his provocation to her news, Ramsay needed to calm down, or this discussion was going to quickly move beyond the scope of bringing the truth to light and into a battle ground where she would be forced to react negatively to deescalate the situation. Punishing Ramsay for his outburst when he had a right to be cross with her wasn't how Sansa wished to proceed, it made her feel guilty and domineering, but any sort of anger resurgence in Ramsay was dangerous and needed to be nipped in the bud before it was given wings to take flight. Sansa's resolve hardened, and she affixed Ramsay with a severe glare snatching his bicep in a painfully tight grip to pull him close. Her tone took on a crisp edge as she annunciated harshly, "You WILL control yourself, Ramsay, or I will give you reason to!"
Immediately absorbing the threat Sansa levied as her form hovered dangerously over him with a darkening disposition, Ramsay's fury broke like shards of ice slammed against stone deposed by a creeping apprehension of the trouble he may have just caused himself. Ramsay's throat bobbed nervously as wide startled blue orbs took Sansa in raptly. Her intimidating stance extinguished his rebellion like one blew the flame out on a candle. The hurt still radiated from Ramsay's expressive gaze though, and to see it Sansa couldn't help but to soften the fierceness she projected at him with a sigh of resignation.
The annoyance she'd carried receded to sympathy as the incited meekness she'd instilled in Ramsay was brought to the forefront with so simple a gesture. It felt like there was no medium ground for them. Pushing Ramsay back into a mindset of being fearful of her was not at all what she wanted. Sansa loosened the handhold on Ramsay's bicep drawing her palms up to lightly cup his rigid shoulders as she addressed him gently, "Please, come back and sit with me. There was no cloak and dagger agenda to my journey. I never meant to cause such strife in you. I simply did not tell you because I thought it would have been easier for you and Jon to get along if you didn't know where I was going." Sansa's lip turned up in a slight grin reaching a hand up to tenderly brush the bangs from Ramsay's eyes as she continued, "Besides, I suspect you would have been far unrulier in my absence if I had informed you of my intent."
A frown protruded on Ramsay's face as his gaze shifted to glare down at the snow. Irrespective of a want to vehemently protest Sansa's statement, Ramsay only dismissively grumbled, "You don't know that." He refused to recognize the truth of Sansa's statement justifying internally that heedless of his possible actions, she should have still told him.
Sansa tilted her head raising a curious brow at Ramsay's diminished reply. Her smile broadened as she admitted, "No, I don't suppose that I do. It was a poor assumption on my part."
It mollified Ramsay partially to hear Sansa acknowledge she could have misjudged him (although both knew that she was more than likely correct in her assessment of his probable behavior had she told him her objective prior to her departure.) Ramsay relaxed under her sympathetic tone, but he still hadn't forgiven her. Making an outward show that he wasn't willing to let the slight go so easily, Ramsay dramatically huffed squaring his shoulders and crossing his arms about his puffed chest in subtle defiance, a physical representation of his unhappiness to her newly revealed secret. It wasn't the best way to portray his sentiments on the matter, but it was the only way Ramsay felt he could without raising Sansa's ire.
Lifting her chin, Sansa's placating smile fell away in the face of Ramsay's persisting disgruntlement. She accepted Ramsay's displeasure given her news, but him wallowing in resentment was getting them nowhere. His agitation was starting to affect her mood, and Sansa found herself folding her own arms becoming exasperated by the tension between them. Sansa lectured tiredly, "You are upset, and you have a right to be, but there is no undoing the past, Ramsay. I am sorry that I hurt you with my choice, but I do not regret my decision. I would rather sit and talk with you here and now, but I will not force you. If you are too aggrieved to speak on what I've just informed you, the guards can escort you back to our quarters, and we can discuss the matter later."
Wide eyes rose to regard Sansa as Ramsay's resolve was visibly shaken. His arms dropped to his sides losing the momentary stubborn stance he'd taken as he hurriedly blurted out, "No! I… I am displeased, but I'd rather not stop our conversation because of it. I'm ready to hear of the tale you wished to regale me with." He really wasn't ready to hear it, but Ramsay eagerly wanted to know all the same. It had been almost fifteen years since he'd seen his mother, half a lifetime ago, and even though internally the mere mention of his mother incensed Ramsay, a part of him was still very curious as to what she had said about him.
His rational side predicted nothing good, but a hopeful spark of the child she'd neglected wished to hear that she may remember him with a fondness that mothers were envisioned to express upon their progeny just because that child had come from her womb. These conflicting thoughts, old grievances that clawed their way to the surface within him now, changed Ramsay's countenance to reflect a disquiet that had his shoulders slumping as he visibly deflated. He felt defeated to even desire such a reaction from the woman who had made it well known to him that he was a blight in her life that could not be loved.
Sansa observed Ramsay's demeanor, and her heart ached from the portrayal of reconciled pain etched on his face. It hurt to evoke this wound in him, but burying it was only serving to create animosity in Ramsay's heart. This woman had done enough damage; it was time to scour her memory clean and give Ramsay the chance to grow away from his mother rather than letting the taint she'd laid within him continue to fracture the progress she and Jon had brought out of him. To do this, Ramsay needed to be able to talk about her, and Sansa hoped that doing so would allow the mental hold his mother gripped him with to falter and in time diminish.
Wrapping her hand lightly around his, Sansa pulled on him gently, and without further word, Ramsay allowed her to lead him back to their previous seating. The roots held the two aloft from the snow, and Ramsay found himself pulling at the stubs of growth that protruded along the thick trunk of the vine, anything to divert his attention from focusing solely on Sansa. This continued for several minutes before Ramsay, wary of the silence between them, chanced to dip his head to the side and cautiously peek over at her.
She had been waiting for Ramsay to show her he was ready to continue offering him a soft smile that reverberated the love she had begun to feel for him. Ramsay's intense gaze held a fragility to it that even though he had said nothing of the urgency he felt to know what Sansa would tell him, it was clear that the mystery of the unsaid served to terrorize him. He was afraid of what Sansa had learned; he was scared that she would see what his mother had seen in him as if just speaking to the woman would have deposited a seed of affliction to sour any sense of care Sansa could muster for him. It was a ridiculous notion, but it plagued Ramsay all the same.
Sansa straightened as the memory of her visit flooded to populate her mind with images and ill sentiments, "I didn't stay long. I had so many questions I wanted to ask about you, about her, but I didn't ask many. The ones I did ask overwhelmed me to make a bigger discovery that I should never have gone to her asking those questions." Ramsay was hovering on every word she uttered, and this admission made him blink and refocus on Sansa with a crinkled brow of confusion. He didn't interrupt her though, and Sansa moved closer laying her hand tenderly on Ramsay's knee wanting to feel a deeper intimacy with him as she continued, "I should have waited for you to tell me about her when you were ready. I thought that she would subvert the hardship we carried and make it easier to understand you, but it wasn't my place to have gone around you. For that, I am sorry."
Her apology had Ramsay casting his vision away as a surge of guilt for the way he'd initially reacted resurfaced and served to embarrass him, "I'm sorry too. For getting so angry with you." His jaw worked decorating his face with a building malice, and he instinctively leaned forward and away from Sansa's inviting form scoffing with a tinge of pent up hostility, "She isn't worth it." It was an ingrained reaction to push others away when he started to feel vulnerable. Ramsay hadn't done so with Sansa before due to the oddity of their relationship and how out of sorts it had made him feel, but dialogue that delved into the meat of the person he was held their own barriers that had not been softened to Sansa's ministrations with him. It was the reason he'd regained that part of himself to counter her questions asking about his past initially. The reason Sansa had been so taken aback by Ramsay's brazen attitude that had emerged from his otherwise pacified disposition towards her their first dinner shared outside of the dungeon.
Those memories were a removed part of his self that Ramsay had pushed as far from reminiscing on as he possibly could when he'd entered the Dreadfort with his brother, Domeric, and left that old life behind. To say that was the last day Ramsay had thought on his mother would be a lie, but by then, he had hardened to the scars she had left. He had rolled them into a ball and sealed them away with all the pains that scorched his child's heart rendering him inert to feel much of anything at all. It was protection amassed by his first years of hurt that had left him riddled with the rage that never stopped wanting to ask the simple question of her, 'Why?'
Ramsay had stopped asking himself that question long ago meticulously layering over the need to be wanted with a rippling desire to find meaning for his existence. Heke had come to him then, like an oasis in the desert. Ramsay had latched on to the strange smelling man, his true Reek, that showered him with accolades and taught him a greater depravity than any man let alone child should ever know, but Reek was easily won especially if you played his games. He did not hug Ramsay or hold his hand nor did he show any form of tenderness, but Reek had bowed before him, had kissed his feet, and groveled self-depreciatingly to build Ramsay up. He had; in the worst of ways, Ramsay had been born anew the day that Heke had lumbered into his life.
That part of his life was gone in so many ways, but Sansa had sifted through the sands within him and pulled these monoliths from the murky graves Ramsay had cemented them to. And unlike in the past when something had reminded him of either his mother or Heke inadvertently, those identifications fell away from his notice like a drab grey on the horizon, but the context in which he was reminded now by Sansa so pointedly and unavoidably was like being slapped with a haze of vivid color that left him dazed to take in the spectrum.
Ramsay felt her hand leave his leg, and an eruption of cold swept through him to think that Sansa was mutually pulling away from him. Why did he expect any different? But Sansa hadn't, what she did do was inch next to him more fully, so that she could wrap her arm across the full length of his back to pull and clutch him bodily to her as she whispered affirmatively, "You're right; she isn't worth it."
He was rigid at the onset of this gesture, but Ramsay could not deny the want of it for long coupled by the words that called to him to stop resisting Sansa and let himself melt into her awaiting embrace. His anger twisted from his face morphing to confusion and finally to grief as the tumultuous waves of emotion lumped to form a heavy burden in his chest. He was struck mute unable to comprehend how he'd gone so long without feeling anything that to evoke these sentiments in him now instantly overwhelmed him as Sansa planted tender kisses down the side of his face. He didn't cry, but the feeling to do so ebbed at the numbing sensation to remain bitter and unforgiving to the inner turmoil roiling within him.
"I saw enough," Sansa's hardened voice broke through the fog Ramsay drifted through yanking his haunted sights up to project the fear he felt by the context of her statement and tone. Ramsay was relieved that Sansa's expression was not as harsh as her words, no, her words reflected her opinion of his mother. Sansa continued resolutely, "She isn't worth it because she didn't deserve you. She didn't have to tell me much because your story laid within the walls of the hovel she raised you and that which she would not say."
His eyes danced across Sansa's face absorbing the statement but conflicted by how it made him feel. He hadn't spoken of his mother to anyone of merit. Heke had been there to bear witness and therefore needed no explanation nor was his intellect expansive enough to draw correlation to ponder the depths of more than his base desires and immediate reactions to a boy that studied to emulate his profane debauchery. Roose avoided talking about her outside the offhanded mention of how he was illegitimately conceived; those conversations were never sympathetic or inviting to discuss or reflect on his raising with any semblance of concern, so Ramsay had taken to the art of circumventing the want to know and instead feigned disinterest himself.
To take Sansa's expression in now, Ramsay knew that was not the case with her. She very much wanted to relate to him, and this want from her clouded his senses to a unique predicament of flustered perplexity as a myriad of thoughts and responses jumbled together to tie him mentally in knots. Finally, Ramsay found himself speaking flatly in an effort to mask his true feelings from her because he was afraid to continue in this vein and risk revealing what he'd spent a lifetime learning to contain, "It's done then. We can move from discussing her if you found the answers you sought."
"Do you really believe that?" Sansa tilted her head inquiringly affixing Ramsay with a raised brow of curiosity that had him fidgeting uncomfortably. Sansa wasn't forcing him to speak, but her gaze held out the notion that she knew better and so did he. Ramsay turned away from her inquest unable to meet the silent query. Inwardly he hoped that Sansa would lay it to rest because as much as he contested that he didn't want to speak about his mother, the truth was that he did want to open up but the thought of doing so had a tremor building in his stomach making him feel physically ill of the prospect. Unlike prior to this encounter when the subject of her was brought up before, since that point, Ramsay had let Sansa in enough that he would not be able to deny her prying now. That fact he knew this to be the case scared him immensely.
Sansa sensed this in him as Ramsay's vision drifted to Cecil and Temeric's presence and a ripple of tension moved through his sinewy muscles. As much as she wanted to push more from Ramsay, Sansa understood his reticence here out in the open and granted Ramsay a reprieve, "Come," she withdrew from Ramsay's side standing and holding out a hand to him. Ramsay's eyes trailed up her form to her outstretched hand. He took it readily to be guided up to stand beside her. "It's cold out here. Let us return to the privacy of our chambers. I will have a meal sent up for us, and we can speak on these things without the ear of others present," Sansa glanced at the guards giving a slight nod that they were ready to leave as she hooked her arm to entwine her and Ramsay together and without ceremony began leading them away from the Godswood.
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