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A lone brow rose at her playful barb, though Petyr did not seem to take any true offense to it. “Ser Gyles has the right of it.” The cold was miserable. Icy winds which froze fingers to the bone, stiffening them even when covered by glove or mitten. Noses and ears reddened, every intake of breath creating a crystal frost inside of nostrils. Did the man mean to escort her himself through the drifts of snow and frost-laden woods? “Goodness no,” he chuckled. “I am ill-suited for snowy ventures.” Yet her point of the courtyard remained: how much time had he spent without complaint helping to rebuild her simulacrum in ice? Never had he seen her look so beautiful, with flakes of ice in her hair, and a rosy tint to her cheeks. Never had she looked more pure, her mind at ease, escaped to the North and swimming with fond memories of her childhood. No ride through the woods would ever be able to capture her as she was, or recreate that moment in which he had surrendered every sensibility so that he might kiss a snow maid, or else he might ride with her into the woods every day. “My generosity will need to extend to…other pursuits.” A quiet smile.
If she were to actually ask him? Would he say no? Could he?
Turning the line of questioning to decidedly more improper topics, Petyr could but slant his eyes towards Sansa, catching only the end of her fox-tail mane flipping. It was a brief look, as though he meant only to ascertain whatever expression the tone of her voice managed to hide. For a moment, the Lord was quiet. Amusement pinched the corners of his eyes. “I make a handsome living concerning myself with the feelings of others.” As if everything he did boiled down to some unvoiced transaction. It was a statement more telling of the man than perhaps any other he had ever said to her. Lost to the dry pages of an ancient tome.
The slanted gaze returned a second time when Sansa voiced that impossible suggestion. Why not you? As if Petyr Baelish had not run through a thousand different scenarios from start to finish in an attempt to find one in which he could claim Sansa Stark for himself. Why had he never asked? Oh, but he had, he wanted to say and did not. Before she had been sold to the Imp; before her family had been butchered by the Freys; before he had stolen her away and transformed her into a bastard girl – the only way he might make her his. Oh, he wanted her. There were times where that feeling of want burned in his chest so intensely that it hurt. Sansa Stark, the essence of her, filtered through his veins and kept him up at nights. But it was not to be. Not for lack of great Lordship, such the likes that Cersei had been so swift to deny him. Now, Petyr lacked other things. Things which were essential to Sansa’s ascension.
“Conversation will not win wars, my lady.” Nor would familiarity, not would comfort. Baelish had no armies, and did not command the sort of loyalty that was required to build them. Armies the size needed to resecure the North could not be bought, in Westeros, with coin. The land was bled thin, so many potential kings and queens vying for the throne, able-bodied men scattered across the realm under a handful of different banners. Lions and stags and flowers and suns, soon to be diluted further still by wolves and dragons. The North would forsake Sansa if upon her arrival her hand was forever entwined before the gods with that of a Mockingbird’s. Those who tenuously supported her rule now would turn away. None trusted the gray plumage of Petyr Baelish, and rightfully so.
“Am I to believe you would have liked me to?” Turning back towards her, slowly, a set of fingers slid down the pages, a papery sound hissing in whispered drag. Hadn’t he told her, once, that innocence and experience made for the perfect marriage? Did he still find her innocent? In body at least, if not in mind? The book was slowly folded over and carefully set to a table. Petyr looked at her, in a quietly curious, equally amused manner that made it seem as though the entire idea were somehow funny to him. A step, only one, was taken towards her. “Would you still?”
Indeed he was. Even now, huddled safely upon the valley floor, well-supplied in timber and oil alike, she often glimpsed the Lord covetously ensconced within a cloak of fine black fur, or edged particularly close to a room’s hearth. The thought of Petyr venturing out once more into the snowy wasteland wrought by Winter’s coming amused her…and intrigued her equally. It was assumed that Baelish would follow the Stark lady and her husband northward; north to a grey keep of ash and snow so that he might complete this masterwork of political maneuvering. ‘Twas a castle far larger, far less saccharine in its making that required great quantities of coin and attention, whose completion would not garner the man another coveted embrace. So why? Sansa’s road ended at Winterfell, a chilling and unsatisfying cap to decades-long ambitions. Even now, greater motives remained skillfully tucked away behind enameled masks.
“I didn’t mean —— ” Crimson flushed along her cheeks and throat, a guilty stain flaring hotly in the yellowed light. Sansa’s question had naught to do with the feelings or pursuits of others, rather preferences more personal. She wondered then if he ever watched the men in his brothels, as surely he had peered upon her in the godswood, her chambers, her bath. How easy it could be to spend one’s life in observance, until at last a man became nothing more than a compendium of mismatched wants and hungers, a vessel for strangers rather than himself. Did Petyr Baelish — not Littlefinger — possess any of his own? If so, they were never shared with his ward.
Whatever calm she felt when first posing the timid question deserted Sansa. Perhaps a part of her hoped he had not heard, or would politely ignore such an intimate inquiry. Even now it felt as though she played a game of cyvasse in a room of no light and little sound, hardly knowing where her pieces sat, much less the man who played opposite. Asking such a thing could tilt the advantage irrevocable in Baelish’s favor…or, just maybe, in hers. For once these stratagems came to mind only after the curiosity of Sansa’s heart dictated a fool’s tongue.
“True,” the girl conceded, turning with false consideration to a nearby shelf. Along its wooden support stretched tomes new and old on the extensive Arryn lineage. The seed is strong. That was what Jon Arryn told his wife, was it not? All but yours perhaps, my lord. Little Robert Arryn would garner a footnote, nothing more, in those dusty annals. “Yet it might avert them.” For a time it seemed the Lords Declarant would undo all, yet a few choice words and well-timed deception turned fickle tides towards peace once again. As bold with them as he is with me. A different sort of bravery, no doubt, than that of her father or poor, dead Ser Harrold; tinged with a darkness, a thirst which paid no mind to the barriers that dictated the acts of honorable men. In Westeros loyalty might be purchased, through coin or land or titles, or persuaded. While Baelish would not mount a horse in polished armor, brandishing his family’s sword for the honor of Sansa Stark, he could still stir others to that bent.
“No.” Had he not felt her struggle that day in the courtyard? Of course he had. Just as Petyr surely knew in their other dalliances, where consent grew slowly, that enthusiasm, confidence in the act remained perilously low. Nor was it merely a maid’s trepidation: only in the moments after speaking did Sansa dare consider him in a suitor’s light. It was not, she admitted with no small amount of trepidation, unflattering. Upon the shelves she found a particularly fascinating title, head tilting to read it properly in her small halo of candlelight held aloft. Rather without warning Sansa felt herself at a precipice’s edge, toes peeking out into oblivion.
Where Baelish appeared entertained by conversation’s turn — and how her belly dropped at the sight — Sansa finally looked to him with apprehension in those narrow rings of blue made nearly black for lack of light. Terror at what thoughts blossomed in her weary mind, at how he might laugh were she to speak them, at how he might indulge them. Yet he asked. He asked, that alone sufficing to smooth away beleaguered crinkles of brow and eyes as Sansa admitted, calmly, with the shrug of one shoulder: “Yes.” Gods help me, I can never unsay that word. Instead, she repeated it. “Yes, Petyr, I would.”