There had been a line or two about Sansa’s sudden ailment, allusions towards some problematic infection. But it wasn’t about what Lapworth couldn’t have. Baelish knew how to pitch; he’d been doing it long enough that he understood how things worked. No one wanted to hear about the problems – they wanted solutions. How could Lapworth benefit from not spending that evening – or any other – with Sansa Stark? There were a dozen things Petyr could offer him, but nothing that Lapworth didn’t already have or couldn’t already bargain for himself.
Except for one thing.
There were a few names on Lapworth’s list who hadn’t been crossed off due to varying circumstances. Some were beyond even his reach, providing more use to the Capitol than that of a simple companion to be bought. Others had nothing to lose and therefore no leverage with which to be bargained for. Threats meant little to those who didn’t care. Even more so when the person in question had won their Games with nothing more than a stroke of luck and pure, unfettered strategy which required no outside intervention. Such a person happened to be well within Baelish’s reach, though stood decidedly outside of the purview of others. This person had required no parachutes to win, no sizable donations to seize her crown, and had won quite by surprise by capitalizing on her own perceived weaknesses to the masses and her fellow competitors alike. This person now did primarily what she wanted and little else simply because she had no attachments, no cares, no concerns for anyone other than herself. This person intrigued Lapworth immensely, and on more than one occasion he had told Petyr so.
But Johanna Mason would not be easily swayed.
Petyr knew it was a gamble, but he knew also that he had enough of a rapport with the stubborn, independent girl from his home district that there might be a chance. Already Johanna was known to be wild, promiscuous, although these conquests of hers were by her choice rather than the forced hand of the Capitol, and Horatius Lapworth was certainly not the sort of creature she would deign to spend an evening with. But Johanna was filled with hate, self-loathing, a terrible rage that all but consumed her. Such a rage was easily provoked, and rage itself was a dreadful mire of irrationality. That, Baelish posited, was something he could exploit. Though it would neither be easy nor simple, and he would not come out of the exchange a better man whose conscience was clear. Saving Sansa from the deed only meant that someone else had to take her place. Help was never free. Favors were not simple matters of convenience. In the Capitol, all actions or inactions had a price, most of which were grave. As such, convincing Lapworth that Johanna Mason would prove a far more entertaining liaison than Sansa Stark was the easy part. Securing the participation of the other victor from Seven was decidedly more difficult, and did not come without its tolls.
No one came looking for Sansa in her hotel room that evening. Petyr Baelish did not arrive at her door with the soft rapping of one who had done neither good nor bad, but something abruptly in-between. No explanation came for anything which had transpired. The next morning, when breakfast was delivered to her suite, there was no note from her mentor to be found amongst the spread of freshly-squeezed juices and decadently buttered croissants. At least…there was no note written in his hand. Found inside of the news column delivered with her meal were several different stories – replete with photographs – detailing Johanna’s Night on the Town. At her side was one familiarly paunchy Lapworth. And so it became obvious: Baelish had facilitated a trade. From Stark to Mason. From red to brown.
It was Tatty who came to her later the same day suffering a blustering confusion as to why Sansa’s overfilled itinerary had, overnight, seemingly been erased. Oh, there were still parties and appearances to make, naturally (Tatty assured with a recuperating gusto), but the private bookings had all been canceled. Was it something she had done? Was it that gown Sansa had worn? Too much, too soon? Had it spoiled her innocent facade? One’s presentation was always a delicate balance. Sansa’s prep team were nearly beside themselves with grief. Even Lapworth had rejected her! And his appetite was insatiable! Tatty was quick to assure Sansa, with a hand over a mouth rounded by scandal, that her comment had not been a double entendre. Everyone was upset. Even Petyr had gone back to Seven on the morning train, clearly unable to take the shame. No one knew what to do!
She continued on in a like manner until her lip stain needed reapplying. Glancing into a pocket mirror, she bemoaned her own sloppiness, and apologized, sincerely, to Sansa for her obvious social failings and unintentional missteps. For an escort, nothing more traumatizing could happen than to have her prized victor be suddenly worth nothing.
On the train, Petyr recalled the forlorn little smile with which Sansa had dutifully accepted Lapworth’s advances, and decided it was that minuscule gesture which had convinced him not to stay his hand. She’d accepted it. She was ready to do as she was told, ready to pay her dues. Perhaps that was all he’d wanted.
Sansa awoke — for the first time — long after midnight. She had tumbled to one side, sleep and gravity tugging her limp body from its shallow, dozing angle into a precipitous drop. For a moment the girl had no notion as to where she was. Seven? The Training Center? Lapworth’s? Memories trickled back into focus, first the start of her evening, then the end. Petyr’s rescue. His disappearance. When last she saw him the silver-winged mentor had been speaking quite charismatically to her duped sponsor; his rushed instructions gave no hint at what lie she ought maintain, how long her exile should continue. Blearily she noted the time from a dimly illuminated clock beside the bed. Late. Very late. If Baelish had come to explain then only silence met his knocks. Half-stumbling Sansa made herself properly ready for sleep; jewels sparkled in a heap on the floor, water ran down her face in shades of peach and black and beige, the tingle of mint replaced alcohol’s stale nuisance on her palate.
She slept like the dead.
Except…Petyr did not call that morning, either. Instead an Avox awakened her; rather, what sumptuous feast he bore on silvered trays, a dozen steamy tendrils wafting towards an empty belly, awoke her. Sansa still marveled at what plenty the Capitol knew. A tureen overflowing with scrambled eggs — at least a dozen, cooked to impossibly fluffy heights — stood next to platters of plump sausages and bacon dotted with fresh black specks of pepper. She nearly burned her fingers prying open a roll which coughed out another puff of steam, its brothers and sisters stacked in a pyramid beside neatly sliced pats of butter, jams in varying shades of amethyst, ruby, citrine. There were even fruits, carved with the same delicate precision as those Baelish had ordered; she gravitated towards them first, idly shifting that day’s paper into view.
Lapworth stood out at once, his portliness impossible to overlook. Indeed he filled nearly the entire front-page photograph, crowding out whatever slender thing had substituted for Sansa in her absence. It took several moments for her to recognize the face, a faint shadow of anger lingering beneath all the cosmetics; though she was old enough to have watched that year’s Games and remember them, the difference between a child and a young woman savaged by Snow’s demands sufficed to make the other girl almost completely unfamiliar.
Johanna.
The utter opposite of Sansa, such an exchange made little sense. No wonder Petyr had been speaking so animatedly last night, making his pitch. She had to talk to him, had to understand…what about paying her dues? Yet when Tatty and the others arrived, the man did not count amongst their number. Preoccupied with what had become, to her mind, an unmitigated disaster, the escort could offer no insight into his actions. Not that Sansa asked. Everything conspired to make her believe that whatever had occurred at the party, whatever he had done, constituted a great secret. And so she donned a regretful frown, playing along with ignorance and dismay alike, though she was careful not to suggest any attempt at reconciliation. Her facade faltered only at the news: Petyr had left. Left the Capitol, left her, left behind the entire mess of Sansa’s shattered worth.
Reality, however, proved somewhat less dire. Guests still clambered to meet her, to touch her, and men of all ages attempted to ply her with drinks and gifts to end the night in their beds. None so wealthy as Lapworth, whom she blessedly failed to see again, but such fortune was relative to a girl from the districts. She rejected every offer. Hope lingered on in many of them, though, enough left with the impression of an impending decision that Sansa took on an almost mythical, if imminently frustrating, reputation. This Victor required more than the usual temptations, a puzzle none so far had managed to solve. But try they did.
Over the next fortnight only one encounter soured her mood, so severely that when a vacant evening at last appeared on her calendar Sansa declared the next week off. Her family missed her, the girl declared, and would miss her even more when summer arrived. It was an excuse sufficient to earn her a ticket home.
Her train reached Seven late in the evening, much to Sansa’s pleasure. Despite spending most of the ride deep in thought she still required time before setting out to fulfill the true purpose of her visit. A night with family helped; she had even missed Arya, whose sharp tongue and shifting moods sometimes grated terribly. Bathed in the soft glow of moonlight filtering through her bedroom’s curtains, it was almost possible to think of the Capitol as merely a bad dream.
Almost.
This time she came to Baelish’s empty-handed, assuming pretense all but abandoned between them. Except Sansa hadn’t journeyed all the way back to Seven in search of a quick rut on an old couch; she wanted answers, an explanation, or at least some context for what had happened. When Petyr failed to answer her knock she simply pushed on the door. Open, just as before. She found him on that sofa, awake but more ragged than his polished self of two weeks prior. “I saw Johanna,” Sansa told him without preamble. “She said I should tell you to go fuck yourself, after I kindly did the same.”