fan_flashworks | ASOIAF/GoT: Fanfic: The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships / It's Funny How the Story Lingers

Title: The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships / It's Funny How the Story Lingers
Author:

clarahow // agentroxylancelots // charleybradburies (will be posted after challenge)
Fandom: GoT / ASOIAF
Characters: Margaery Tyrell & Sansa Stark
Pairing: Margaery/Sansa
Length: 1010w
Rating: E
Summary: Perhaps in life, the monsters do win...but no one ever said that monsters and heroism were mutually exclusive.
Content Notes: Werewolf!Starks AU (also KITN!Robb AU and AU in which people are actually happy and good things happen to them ahem). Some blood!kink, implied public sex, and some minor violence involving animals.
Author Notes: Written for Challenge #120: Midnight;

femslashbb May Challenge: Mythology; and

100_women prompt #26: Blood. (Also applicable are challenges #20: Mythology & #85: Monsters.)
Title and cut text from "Helen & Cassandra" by Al Stewart.

Margaery has heard, of course, all of the stories. Well, perhaps not all of them, but a great many. She’s learned to turn her ear to any conversation wherein the topic of the Starks arises, whether it’s about the legends or not.

She’s been paying attention for a long time, because of her interest in the family…in the eldest daughter. Sansa had once been pretty, and had grown to be stunningly beautiful; she’d learned to temper herself between awe and excitement and reservation, learned to only bow when it meant something, learned to hold her own whilst seeming to do scarcely more than lift a finger.

She’s heard the rumors, and listened to the legends, and she’s held out on believing them. For if they are true, then they mean that the Starks are monsters. Monsters, like those that hide in the forests and devour horses and snatch bands who are unaware of their surroundings, never to be seen alive again.

And Margaery is not willing to allow that as a possibility.

Sir Eddard, so kind and honest and diplomatic. Lady Catelyn, strict yet clever and lovely. King Robb, strong and well-spoken and jovial, his companionable bastard brother always at his side. Prince Bran, intelligent and understanding and witty. Princess Arya, pretty and brave and unrestrained, and little Rickon, rowdy and confident and seldom flanked not by his pet direwolf - as for those two, it was not difficult to believe the stories when it came to them. The others, she found it less likely.

And Princess Sansa? The ray of light whose brilliance her home was lucky enough to house? Whose frame had so gloriously taken refuge thrice now upon her sheets of silk, whose soft lips had so tenderly graced her skin, whose wetness and whose touch had been as sweet as the scent of the flowers boasted by the Reach?

Margaery would need to see it be truth with her own eyes, before giving it thought; and as such, it is fitting that she is the only who properly does, that while she is milling about in the gardens, doing little more than dreaming on her feet - although still, in the middle of a sleepless night - one of the large, feral dog pups that’s been running about causing havoc finds its way to one of the small meadows inlaid within the garden rows, and to a number of animals therein dwelling.

One of them, a foal, seems particularly weak, not yet having learned to walk steady on its skinny legs, and as the dog comes closer and starts to bark, the poor thing whines and starts to stumble away. The dog doesn’t move, obviously having decided that worthy supper was the baby horse, but as it begins to inch closer, a louder growl slowly pushes it away.

Margaery momentarily has the instinct to flee, but she’s too compelled by whatever has apparently stayed hidden inside her castle to run away, so she slips a slight bit away from the meadow so that she keeps hidden from view.

The growling turns to a series of sharp snarls, but the dog still attempts to maneuver towards the little foal; the foal seems to have caught on, however, to its protector, and moves - only as quickly as it can - in its direction.

Moments later, when the dog tries to lurch forward, it finds a strong jaw, of what's revealed to be a large, regal wolf, clamped around its own. The wolf yips at the foal, and the foal races off - it falls almost immediately, but it keeps going, and Margaery’s attention is kept upon the animals’ disagreement - and the wolf hoists the dog up and carries it with surprising tenderness back to the middle of the meadow, where the moon beats on the scene and illuminates it all for Margaery.

The wolf sets the dog down, but with a growl and a howl, and the dog races off past Margaery; she slips further behind the garden wall reflexively, thinking she might keep the wolf from spotting her.

But soon, she hears what sounds like a sigh, a human sigh, and can stay hidden no longer. She peers back in to the meadow and her sight happens upon that delightful lover of hers, Sansa, naked as her nameday, adorned with trickles of blood dancing, illuminated, down from her lips.

Sansa doesn’t seem to notice her, but heads towards an edge of the meadow; Margaery, though, is somehow not shocked enough to keep herself silent, and she rushes into the grassy area, her thin nightgown disagreeing with the breeze as her feet patter on the ground.

“It’s true, then?” she yelps, and Sansa turns, with a look of surprise unlike any that Margaery’s ever seen etched into the creases in her face.

“Margaery, I…”

“You’re a wolf.”

“A direwolf,” Sansa whispers, concern now joining her uncertainty as she crosses her arms across her chest, little attention paid to circumstance.

“But only when I choose to be,” she adds, just barely managing to meet Margaery’s eyes, as though the qualification is the most critical commentary she has.

A monster, supposedly, a ravenous, massive, frightening, animal…but fierce, and just…and Sansa.

Margaery closes the gap between them, and before she can think to use the hem of her nightgown instead, she runs her thumb against Sansa’s chin and wipes off some of the blood, meeting Sansa's eyes again when slips her thumb into her mouth and sucks it off. Sansa licks her lips, with a covetous expression that Margaery never imagined she might behold from her, and Margaery dives in, pressing her tongue to Sansa’s bare neck where the blood had first dripped, lapping at her as though she were the animal, leaving a couple small bruises on her journey to Sansa’s lovely little breasts. A number of light gasps escape Sansa, but when Margaery’s teeth grasp at and suckle her nipples, she rewards Margaery with a proper lustful moan before pulling her upwards again, into a kiss that tastes of blood and longing and legend.

ASOIAF/GoT: Fanfic: The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships / It's Funny How the Story Lingers

25-31 May 2015