Chapter Text
There was a moment she took before the beginning of every semester. A day of reflection and solitude. She had grown, and she was growing and her students would grow with her.
Her parents were still shocked she went into this. Teaching was not her forte as a teenager, and history held little to no interest to her besides stories of knights and damsels as a child.
A random required art history credit with a professor who loved the Middle Ages and brought back the stories from Sansa’s childhood with a new light, one which showed depth and spirit, and humankind’s need to create and relate even during the darkest times had Sansa switching from a fashion business major to history by the end of the first semester.
It took her 10 years to get her PhD. A semester off after Joffrey. A semester off and a new university after Professor Baelish. A specialization in medieval history, and a dissertation on the Winter Queen, a nameless woman who history and men decided was unimportant, but whose steady dedication to her people and the North alive through the longest recorded winter saw her graduating in the summer, with an intimate graduating class and her family taking an entire row in the audience.
Her dedication and passion, however, mattered little in a world with a large number of history graduates and a larger population of professors who were too busy enjoying tenure to retire. An adjunct professor at a community college was not her dreams, but she had access to multiple databases of research and she could be happy with that.
This semester she was teaching 4 classes, more than she had any other semester, and the Dean had mentioned a need for a new assistant professor. She could not do badly this semester. 4 basic history courses, which had been in her teaching rotation since she was a TA during graduate school would be easy, she told herself. They had to be. Teach some basics until she could move up, and begin teaching the more advanced classes. Do not think of Baelish’s breath as he suggested how he could improve her situation. Do not think of Joffrey’s interest in medieval weaponry, and how the iron still seemed to have more bite than in other eras.
She shook herself out of her thoughts. Her day before classes was never busy. She didn’t see anyone on these days. She left her office, and mentioned nothing to her family.
Today she went hiking. It was still too cold for many people. The late January ice was melting into early February snow. Sansa had been raised in the North, had only ever left it for Ivy league colleges, only to return frozen by the Summer Land’s people. The North was more than her home, but was in her very soul. The cold of winters, more regular now than ever in the past, felt like taking a breath of home with every step.
Her dog, Lady, relished the cold too. Her service dog vest kept her bright against the landscape. Bright enough that another dog saw her, and took her for a wolf. After growling for what felt like hours, with Sansa quickly spiraling behind the two, a man appeared, grabbing the stray dog and hushing it until it relaxed, with Lady quickly turning her attention back to her owner. Lady’s paws against Sansa’s chest and licks to the face got Sansa to focus less on the memory of a man she could not name. The man who saved her was now pointedly not staring, simply standing watch. He was tall. His hair was long, and she wondered, as she did with all men, if she had known him before whether he would have helped with the hurting or if he would have been strong enough to stop it. She wondered what he considered abuse. Words or hits?
He could be a hitter. There was no way to see anything but a vague outline of a body in true northern clothes, but he seemed strong. It was in the way he carried himself. Men carried themselves differently when they were strong, when strength was more nature than logic.
But after she stared for longer than a minute, his posture changed to almost insecure. As if being seen did not come naturally to him. As if strength was something he was used to being enough to get people to not look.
“Can you walk?” The gruff voice was not what shocked her, and his head finally facing her straight on did not scare her, but made her more relaxed. There was a shame that came with scars. A shame when she was younger would have made her frightened, made her not look him in the eyes. But she understood now. Understood the scars, and the burdens that come with them. She nodded, and got up off the ground she didn’t remember falling into.
They backtracked through the trail in silence, the stray now following closely at the man’s heels. She tried to make conversation, a life training in courtesies does not disappear with a few bad years, but he would have none of it. Grunts were the most she got in response to any of her questions. Even his name was apparently meant to be a secret from her.
“He seems to like you.” she said in what she had determined to be her last and final effort.
“He’s a dog, they can’t not like somebody.” He sounded careless, but he rubbed the dog’s head when he walked by.
“I know a vet clinic near here. They could give him his shots. You could take him home.” His next bout of silence seemed more thoughtful than annoyed, and Sansa could consider that a success.
When they get to their cars, he asks her for the vet clinic’s information and if they were open for the next few hours in the most gentle voice she thought he could have. She wrote it on his hand with a dying pen, and he didn’t say thank you, but she did have to almost scratch the address into him, so she understood.
-
The next day began her marathon day. An 8 am which had too many freshmen in it, a 10 am which threatened complete silence for an entire semester had her dreaming of advanced classes and research and how nice it would feel to have a student actually respond when she said a question. The next class she taught was a night class. Longer than most, an hour and a half rather than 50 minutes, it was a new class style the college was trying to prevent students from having to come on Fridays.
It was meant for people with jobs, as most night classes were, so when 7 came around and there were no people she understood and she waited. And waited. At 7:24 she was on her way to writing a rather snarky email to the class that Lady nudged the syllabus out from beneath the attendance sheet and picking it up realized she had listed the wrong classroom.
Quickly moving to the second floor instead of the first and shaming herself she walked into a group of annoyed adults who were standing outside what they believed to be their class. An Associate Professor from the Art History section of her department was arguing with a student whose low baritone did not prevent him from projecting his voice throughout the hallway as he swore he did not break the door handle he was just trying to get into the fucking classroom.
One by one she stopped, and quickly gave them the correct room number, urging them away from the scene. They largely ignored her, but as she got closer she prayed that they hadn’t for their own sakes. The man from the hiking trail was very different under bright lights. His scar was more prominent, but so was his jawline. He was wearing less layers this time, giving her hints that the bulk she had assumed was clothes was likely muscles. He was strength.
The Art Hist professor saw Sansa from the side and instantly went for attack, “Stark, one of your students seems to have an issue with not only me, but this door. Take care of it.”