Had Petyr ruined her? Certainly the man on the couch suffering from a deal too many sips of alcohol hadn’t thought of it like that. He hadn’t thought of it at all. Perhaps if he knew the truth of it, of her, of what she had been before that evening when she’d accosted him in Snow’s mansion – perhaps then he would have taken different steps. Everything, in fact, would have been different. None of it would have happened. And so the innocuous flutter of an unintentional lie had spun out of control and changed the course of a great many things. The value of purity, even its perception, was quite high. Men would pay for it. Men would sacrifice for it. Men would go to war for it. Even Petyr had taken measures to secure something he believed Sansa’s to possess, though it was not purity of the flesh which he fought for, but perhaps an ever more rare purity of the heart and mind. Something uncorrupted in a world of ultimate corruption seemed worth saving, though its rescue and preservation would, in the end, be as futile as rescuing a kitten from a busy road only to place it back in its home within a garbage filled alley. Petyr hadn’t saved her; he’d simply delayed the inevitable. For she was right: no stay of execution was indefinite, and he would not be able to intervene each time a powerful member of the Capitol’s upper echelons wished to spend a private evening with Seven’s latest victor.
So what was it then? A show of good will? A metaphorical olive branch which he hoped might mend some of the quarrel between them? It seemed too extravagant to be that when a simple apology would have sufficed. It was impossible, then, to know what Baelish had been thinking or what he thought of sitting there beside her.
She wouldn’t look at him and Petyr didn’t quite know what to make of it. He didn’t quite know what to make of the fact that she was there at all, pouring drinks and helping herself to them. He’d not been so out of sorts in a while, he realized, and this was further confirmed by the way he struggled to read the time. He squinted towards the same dusty clock on the wall which had once told him he was in danger of missing his train. The same clock he’d ignored in favor of finding physical satisfaction with the girl beside him on the couch. The numbers were blurred, the second hand moving too fast or too slow for him to focus. He gave up and decided it must be somewhere near midday based on the way the light was filtering in through the curtains. What actual day it was eluded him entirely. Sometime during the week, he surmised, or else Sansa wouldn’t be there. She’d be with her family, doing domestic things like playing board games or laughing jovially about this and that around the dinner table. Is that what he imagined went on in the house across the courtyard?
The crooked smile he’d worn fell away like some discarded paper mask. The corners of his eyes pinched with thought, with the inability to process a thought. Sansa pushed the newly-filled tumbler towards him. Its amber contents swirled and sloshed, swaying dangerously close to spilling over the rounded lip, but always turning back the other way at just the last second. The reflection of Sansa through the glass was distorted, a fun-house mirror with which to view his fellow victor bulge and bow and seem entirely too red through the distilled hue of fermented fruit mash.
“Why?” There he looked away from the freakish reflection, turning only his head to look at her. Was it some sort of a memento she wished to keep? The day I was almost sold to Lapworth! The gown had been stunning. It had fit her perfectly from head to toe. It was the sort of gown she could do anything and beguile anyone in. It was the sort of gown she could pretend in. But what point was there in bringing it to Seven where she had no need of a dress to achieve any of it? In Seven she was already something of a mythical creature, looked at as more of a character from some fable than an actual human being. They didn’t idolize her in the same way they did in the Capitol, but she would never be one of them ever again. Sequestered away in some forgotten luxury village, bringing rations and reward to her district by simple existence, shuttled to and fro from the Capitol without cause – and most importantly, sitting atop that wretched dais and forever being a face associated with condemning two new children year after year to the Capitol’s bloodsport. That was all done intentionally. The Capitol never wanted its victors to be viewed as one of the people, as someone for the citizens of the districts to rally around and celebrate in the sort of meaningful way that a true-born hero would have inspired. The victors of the Hunger Games were sentenced to a life in limbo, never quite being part of the Capitol’s fold, but neither being entirely part of their home district again either.
A slow blink came in reply to Sansa’s fumbling answer. She didn’t know either. She wanted to see him. So she’d brought it back. For him. To wear for him. Which meant she wanted to continue whatever it was they’d abandoned in that Capitol hotel room. So his sacrifice – if that’s what it was – had worked in the sense that she’d clearly forgiven him. “Oh.” It sounded more apathetic than his stare appeared; his stare held a glimmer of interest, though it was more of a passing thought than a solid idea. Petyr’s gaze dropped to where her fingers worried over each other. He couldn’t decide if she was nervous or uncomfortable. “Is this my repayment?” Ever aware of the exchange of currency, Petyr understood that Sansa sitting next to him had nothing to do with the idea of recompense. It was far worse than that: Baelish now represented normalcy to Sansa. Solace. A haven. A place to decompress and recuperate the things she’d lost. And what had she lost? Save for some fragments of innocence she shouldn’t have still been holding onto, or some trumped up ideas about chivalry and humanity. The arm behind Petyr’s head slowly unfolded; the lines of muscle that subtly shifted told her that he may be lean, but he was far from weak. “I helped you, so I get to have you?” It was difficult to tell whether he was speaking seriously or wryly, and the tilt to his head did nothing to help. Further difficult was what he meant by the words ‘have you’. Was he speaking to her company? Her companionship? Her body?
“I think maybe you’re not drunk enough.” With that, Baelish leaned slowly forward, two fingers touching to the side of the glass and easing it back towards Sansa’s side of the table. Not once did his gaze waver from her face, as though he delighted in taking in every twitch of uncertainty or discomfort. The entire motion seemed somehow like a taunt, a dare, an unspoken challenge he urged her to meet.
Blue far clearer than Baelish’s fuzzed mossy stare followed its hazy track to also contemplate the clock hanging placidly on distant wall. Tick—tick—tick. Sansa discerned no profound meaning to a pulse regulated by tiny metal cogs, no statement on life’s foibles purveyed through what minuscule grains of sand were forgotten by teeth poorly meshed, and how their immeasurable errors eventually grew into entire minutes, hours of lost time. Yet how like an eye did ivory face seem. Did Petyr feel the weight of its stare? Sad, perhaps, that neither could draw parallels to those symbols so prized by civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, long since turned to dust and forgotten. Only Snow’s all-seeing-eye looked down upon the districts and their victors, an unblinking stare of inky black threatening to burn through what flimsy shelter one could find. Was he thinking of the president now? His power? What he might do were Lapworth, or any other sponsor, to complain?
Such worry washed over her but did not cling; like a brine-kissed tide it left unmistakable impressions on her thoughts, though Sansa would not think on them until much later, after they had dried and festered to an irritating, demanding itch. Instead of judgment perhaps Baelish found a certain steadiness in the predictable loops of triplicate hands, a sobering hold into which intoxicated fingers might dig. For her part Sansa saw nothing, only the time. A few minutes after eleven in the morning; not too early, not too late. She had hoped to arrange her visit in those tempting doldrums between breakfast and lunch, never guessing that Petyr would begin a liquid diet so early. Rather than speak with him and leave, she now sat well-ensconced on those familiar cushions, cheeks and tongue and throat all humming, recognizing the pattern of her actions yet somehow incapable of reversing it.
At last she watched Petyr, fingers still twiddling in her lap. Even drunk there was a certain sharpness to him, that final defense nearly unassailable by liquor or trust. Deep within that intoxicating fog lay razor-thin wit, the magnetic persuasion that had unknowingly drawn Sansa in. Slowed by whiskey she could better recognize its tells and sly mechanisms, an academic exercise instead of one that granted any true advantage. Strip away the finery, the cynicism, the aloof distance, and she found a clever boy. How terrible it must have been, to see games and politics so clearly as a child, using them to one’s advantage, to survive, only for such drive to be used as an excuse to vilify. Sansa wondered what he must have been like, before. The fantasy built itself easily: quick-witted and eager to prove himself, perhaps a little grating, but ultimately possessed of an ambition no different from the hundreds of other children born into a virtual guarantee of poverty and toil. Or maybe he was nothing like that. A glance could never tell her, and certainly neither would Baelish.
Was that what she wanted, to wear a spangled dress for him and him alone? Not an egregious leap of logic by any means, for no one else resided in Seven that she would seek to entertain in such a way. Yet that night in a Capitol hotel room had left things between them painfully clear — Petyr wanted nothing of his ruby-haired Victor. To succumb, then, to whatever impulse might compel Sansa into such a flagrant display — of what? Desperation? Desire? — led only toward humiliation. No prideful Stark would ever place themselves in the way of such harm. She spoke the truth, then, uncertain as to why or how her hands worked to fold bejeweled fabric into a little square, packing it away to ostensibly gather dust in Seven rather than the Capitol. She simply didn’t know. In their world ignorance was a dangerous indulgence, surprises born from it far more likely to harm than delight.
But she made no effort to correct Petyr. He thought Sansa wanted to wear it for him; that he had earned it, even. A gaze unfocused, vaguely contemplating the drunken mess of Baelish, resettled on that hazy green stare.
“Was that what you hoped for?” she asked in turn. “Repayment?” So many of their encounters happily swathed themselves in convenient lies; now was perhaps the closest either had come to unfettered honesty regarding their own expectations, their own desires. Movement distracted her. The limb he shifted was not as well-muscled as those of mill workers, yet neither did it have even a whisper of the doughy softness most men in the Capitol found in style. It was real. Simply the way Baelish had been designed by fate, unaltered by forced labor or outlandish fashion. And looking to his arm recalled long fingers, firm and steady, guiding her, caressing…
A blink cleared her thoughts, but not the faint pinkish blush dotting both cheeks.
“I think the past few weeks have proven that isn’t how I want to do things.” Sex, in exchange for aid. Glass raced across wood grain with a low, rattling hiss; again its contents threatened to slop over, yet Baelish had used a gentle hand. She didn’t want to get drunk, didn’t want to further confuse whatever they were or were not doing with one another, but she wanted to go back across the courtyard even less. “Drunk enough for me?” Amber caught the late morning glow seeping through shuttered windows, casting a yellow-orange glow over her face as Sansa raised it to her lips. She took one sip, then another, swallowing methodically until half the liquid had vanished. Partway through her eyes fluttered shut, all the better to disguise a faint prickling of tears brought on by its burn. When they reopened, focusing slowly on Petyr, not a trace remained. “Or for you?” For a little while she sat there in contemplative silence, Tully blue gradually narrowing with the same drugged focus that Baelish’s eyes had before. “I wish you had washed up,” Sansa declared. “I’d rather enjoy kissing, I think.”