{ hell is empty ;; all the devils are here }

⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

That same expectation she felt just then, wallowing in the mire of unvoiced agreements, contracts signed in blood and sheer resolve – it would crush her, eventually. She would languish away under the weight of it, or she would burst free and destroy every last notion of it. Only time would tell. Baelish privately hoped he might be Sansa’s Lysa. What grim poetry, what absurdly perfect happenstance; he’d teach her how to hone that violence she felt and knew not what to do with, then he’d sink into it when it became too much.

Did Sansa believe Petyr to be in distress? Perhaps he was. Perhaps that decorous display of unwashed glasses and rumpled clothing spoke to some sort of hurt inside the man, though he would almost certainly not admit to it, and never to her. More likely, however, was that it spoke simply to a pattern. How well did Sansa know Petyr? Really know him? Every conception of him was formulated on a basis that she was allowed some sort of intimate glimpse into his life, but did she have any solid evidence to substantiate such a hefty claim? Oh…yes. He’d saved her. He’d saved her where he’d saved no one else. Intervening first with her very life, and then whatever notion of her chastity still existed. Something about her drove Petyr to action; such profound intervention from a man who had for many years done little more than idly spectate spoke greater volumes than any warbled declaration of devotion ever could.

The look in his eyes when she rose from the couch in agreement, that spoke volumes too. Petyr’s practiced persona, keenly sculpted, refined smile, immaculate body language – it always left a deadened void to be found in those eyes of green and gray. Now, watching her step towards him, there was something almost predatory. It was so easy, so easy, Sansa did not even make Petyr work for it, and this placed her fundamentally on a level far beneath him, putting her at an inherent disadvantage to each and every of their encounters. Mutual satisfaction had long been an unspoken pact, but to what end? Under whose terms? It was Sansa who flitted time and again to land at his stoop in blatant solicitation; it was Sansa who more often than not initiated any interaction between them, sexual or otherwise; it was Sansa who sought to repair whatever torn ligaments and nerves had been shred and snipped by the Capitol’s greedy wiles.

It was Petyr who looked at her as though she were a lone fawn wandering into the den of a hungry wolf. It was a hungry look, an insidious look, somehow both subtle and unspeakably vulgar at the same time. Her hand, smaller but far from tentative, slipped into his, preparing to guide him, guide him, up the stairs, as though it were suddenly she who stood in control. Petyr found this amusing; a smirk flickered across his mouth. Each time she looked back, drawing him nearer, his eyes were on hers, dark, shadows of drink and sleeplessness lurking at the planes beneath his eyes. There were no indecent looks down her form, no lingering gazes focused on her ass. Petyr was focused only on her. By the time they reached the landing of the second floor, Sansa’s agency paid off. Petyr stood just behind her, beside her, and then, against her. His was a firm lean, pinning her between himself and the wall, one hand still tangled with hers, the other sliding around her waist to pull against the small of her back, joining their abdomens in lurid press.

“It doesn’t take much…” he mocked. Whether he spoke to the relative lightweight status of her drinking, or her willingness to rut with him wasn’t made clear. There was a silvery glint to grinning eyes as they washed over her face, settling on her lips. Petyr’s mouth parted, his head a telling tilt as though he intended to slant his mouth across hers and stake claim. “You feeling it yet?” That was clear: he spoke of the liquor. Was it warming her blood, pooling in her tummy, hazing her mind? Is that what he wanted? With a slight lean he brought himself ever closer, the tip of his nose a drag along her cheek, up and over in an arc, until his mouth was at her ear, until she could feel the wash of his hot breath against its delicate shell. But he didn’t nip at that sensitive bit of flesh, didn’t drag his tongue lewdly along her lobe. The hand entwined with hers freed itself, drifting fingers up her side until they reached the neckline of her plain shirt, coasting along its hem. The touch was so light, utterly unobtrusive, almost gentle in its caress as it teased over the protrusion of her collarbone and stole away into the hollow of her throat, up the esophageal column, and then nestled beneath her chin as he leaned back enough to again look her in the eye. There was still a darkness in his, that marauding design all too clear. Sansa’s eyes were blue. Beautiful, beautiful blue.

Another smirk crowded his features, and then he was turning away, walking down the hall and into the bathroom. The sound of the sink turning on and water pouring into the basin echoed out, followed closely by the louder, more prominent belting of the shower stream. When Sansa followed him in, he was already smearing a layer of thick, fresh-smelling foam over his the bits of his face darkened by stubble where he stood above the sink. The shower door was left open.

That seemed intimate, didn’t it? Too intimate? Despite Petyr a hundred times over being privy to Sansa’s prepping process, not once had Sansa ever witness the man in the midst of grooming. Not so much as a buff of the nails or an intentional adjustment of hair. Now he stood poised, razor in hand, bringing the blade carefully down over his face, swiping away unruly hair and cream and flicking it away into the sink, leaving behind a tract of smooth skin. After a few repeated motions of this, Petyr’s eyes finally diverged from the task at hand to accost Sansa in the mirror. The heat of the shower stream was starting to waft out in wispy trails of steam. “Well?” he asked, an expectant lift of one brow. “Go on then.” That he expected her to disrobe and enter the shower first was, perhaps, unfair. It seemed intentional, and any notion of such premeditation would only be confirmed in the creeping twitch of one corner of his mouth, his gaze alight with the sort of gleam that could be found in a cat who delights in first playing with his prey before consuming it. Petyr’s stare was one of wanting; he wanted her to shed her clothing, he wanted her to step into that shower under the scrutiny of his heavy gaze, he wanted her naked and wet and vulnerable.

Sansa knew Petyr as well as he did her — that is to say, not in the slightest. He saw her only in situations of desperation, a protracted state-sanctioned prostitution gracefully designed to prevent any delineation between fantasy and truth. Without the Games her desire failed to exist. It lurked, trapped within a vacuum of Victory, as isolating as it was freeing, shifting quickly from idle distraction to reliable habit. Yes, Petyr saved her. But the creature he pulled from stinking muck by virtue of a lecher’s fortune would never again resemble a mother coveted. Her strength came from a different place now. Not the careful teachings handed down across generations, but through suffering, that exquisite intimacy of witnessing in flesh what so many others salivated at from a pixelated distance.

And it was there Sansa knew her stubbled mentor far better than Catelyn Tully ever might have. Did a young Petyr dream of becoming his best self in honor of childhood infatuation? Were his fantasies filled with effulgent white, that supernal glow reserved solely for love pure and true? No such promise lay with the ruby-haired siren dragging him upstairs. Loss and pain joined in her belly, black like tar, like hell, like hate; the Games put them there, provided a promethean spark so they might roil inside her, coating every organ. Alongside her family Sansa almost forgot that poisonous coating, yet like drew to like, and in Baelish’s company — in his arms — she found at last some acceptance of its hold.

Did mutual contamination condemn their affair? Or merely assure its longevity?

Desire blinded her to the avaricious gleam in grey-green, the girl focused on guiding Petyr to his room, on the tacit consent that she could stay. Beneath illusory appearances power crackled between them: Sansa’s naive faith in where it lay, Baelish’s assurances as to the truth. Heat spread along her nape and shoulders, peach-fuzz hairs prickling with a prey’s primal awareness. Sansa attributed it to lust, nothing more. At the landing she paused, unsure of which door led to his shower, his bed, but Petyr allowed no time for pause. Pliable, she molded herself between wall and man, sapphiric gaze fringed with slackening copper lashes, lips parted on a breath that threatened to become a pant. Tension shifted to exertion, need for resolution grappling with the delectable pleasure of uncertainty. Wanton. A thousand sponsors would beggar themselves for but a few moments alone with that expression of unmitigated hunger, of utter submission.

Only Petyr was privy to it, still.

So too could only he could boast of knowing how distilled liberation warmed the girl to lewd touch and licentious suggestion. Sansa trusted him; if not with her heart, then at least with her general well-being. His advice to do no more than indulge an illusion of intoxication did not go unheeded; tipsy flirtation, boozy relaxation, and late night effervescence were all well-constructed acts in the Capitol, rather than the very real results of overindulgence. But here? Sansa felt it. Weightlessness in limbs that seemed to move well after she bid them to; a growing fuzz at the edges of already frayed thoughts; warmth indistinguishable from the heat spreading out between her thighs. “Mm-hmm.” Theirs was a ballet of nuance. Eyes lidded, then closed, her cheek drifting to brush feather-light against his. Idle fingers toyed with the hem of Baelish’s shirt, nails occasionally grazing over sensitive flesh beneath. In darkness Petyr became a force, a sybaritic specter the mere suggestion of whose touch kept her in thrall. 

Ah, and what he suggested! When wandering fingers dared caress suprasternal valley a breath at last caught in her slender throat. Imagination wheeled towards entertainments far more sinister than the unscrupulous advantages already taken by man and girl. Behind a trembling curtain of black Sansa awaited tightening fingers, a first planting of flowers marbled blue and purple, that sharp panic when breath would not come, when she would feel, acutely, the cry of every nerve in every limb. But Petyr’s grip never tightened, knuckles instead settled at the soft underside of her jaw. A tempest stared back at her, all green banished from those eyes so that only clouds of slate remained, lighting arcing around pupils of blackest ebon. 

It would not take a fool to lose themselves in that storm, venturing into its heart never to return.
A moment of faltering balance and she followed him, tentative. Her feet pressed back down the plush fibers not yet restored from where Baelish just trod. Sansa would remember later how no pictures adorned his walls, nor were there tables artfully topped with knick-knacks or mementos. It might as well have been the corridor of a hotel she walked down, though even such temporary lodgings attempted more personality than the seemingly more personal wing of Petyr’s home.

At hall’s end Sansa ventured through the growing billow of steam, blinking against the damp.

Until now a perfunctory air lingered about their liaisons.  For all the sweat and seed that stained them, the lovers seemed to be silencing a base urge rather than satisfying latent desire. They did not even indulge in the simple pleasure of undressing, with eyes and hands raking over naked flesh. A few adjustments to buttons, zippers, and ties sufficed, just enough to free those parts essential to swift climax. No matter how those habits changed in the weeks or months to come, no image of Baelish disrobing would ever rival the nonchalant intimacy of his routine witnessed then. To watch made Sansa feel complicit in some crime whose pettiness was exceeded only by its prurience. Speech stirred her. Ephemeral droplets coasted and drifted through the tiled space, alighting at last on the edges of a trap laid, its edges shimmering, wavering, disappearing again. To escape was to forsake him, rejecting all gravity of her previous pleas. Sansa could only step into it willfully, unshaken.

She waited until razor’s rasp ceased, Petyr’s eyes shifting from the task of his shaving to the girl who lingered some distance away in the mirror. Staring at him in fogged glass Sansa toyed with the hem of her shirt, much as he had, before drawing it slowly up and over her head. Long ruby hair tumbled down, though it did not quite obscure the lace covering her breasts. A Capitol garment, unmistakably. Pale cream almost as light as her skin dipped low over each swell, the pink curve of her nipples barely visible through the swirling pattern. Still she stared, daring him to look away. Her trousers came next, resigned to the pile atop her cottony blouse, peeled away to reveal matching panties. For several moments Sansa stood there, arms slack at her sides; whether it was for Baelish to appreciate the vision or for her to grow accustomed to his unbroken scrutiny remained unclear. 

She shimmied free of her underwear first, still bare between the legs from her stylist’s most recent attentions. A snap of elastane and her brassiere vanished. That nude apparition lingered for but a moment reflected beside Petyr before Sansa slipped into a shower’s sheltering opacity. Within seconds her skin turned rosy with heat. Absent were the dozens of potions that punctuated her bath, replaced with the simplest, though not the cheapest, soaps. She caressed a blue-green bar, her fingers coming away smelling of him.

From glassy confines a quiet entreaty echoed: “Don’t let me distract you.”

{ When the Cold Winds Rise }

⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

Is that what Sansa hoped for? A reward? Night after night she regaled men of the Vale and men of the North, baiting them with witticisms and beauty alike, all in the name of some unspoken reward? Petyr would find this secretly amusing, if he knew. What sort of reward?, he would wonder, playing over ideas quietly in his head – some decidedly more sordid than others. Did she still hunger for one thing and one thing only? Winterfell? He’d given it to her, hadn’t he? It sat in the frozen North, its roots deeply and forever embedded in hard earth, crumbled but hardly erased. It waited for her, a ruin of everything she’d once cared about. What, then, did she except to be given by carefully dispensing her favor? Certainly not another marriage, since she had refused that notion outright. Petyr looked at Sansa, a dull smile returning her quip. The worth of her desires. Had Petyr not delivered to her everything he had promised her? Had those promises not been built on her wants? Her desires? She gave him nothing, no hint of mirth, and this both bothered and pleased Petyr. Something inside of him grew cold and withered at her perfected distance. It had been quite a while since they had talked, truly spoken to one another, and it would be longer still yet.

Confirmation that she trusted him, that she would heed his requests prompted a brief drop of his gaze to the snow, his chin tilted downward, the smile slightly less dull. “Good.” With a firm dig of his heels into the flanks of his horse, a flurry of freshly-fallen snow was kicked up; the beast lifted hooves high, a drift of marmoreal white far too much of a burden. “I will leave you to it then, my lady. Do try not to lose yourself in all of this snow, mm?” It was a smirk as superficial as the farewell which led his mount around her and away, back up the very same rise from whence they’d come. At the top of the hill, Baelish demanded a guard tail him back to the Gates, leaving Sansa with only two to watch over her in the snowy grove settled comfortably in the shadow of the Giant’s Lance.

Whatever cryptic trials and hardships Petyr had spoken to, none of any special mention appeared. It was more of the same: prattling conversation and swooning dances, too much wine or too little. The Lord Baelish disappeared back into the detritus of his solar, a hundred different letters strewn across his desk and tucked into his shelves. Only at meals did he join the festivities; an odd thing, Myranda Royce idly commented on one evening, for a man who had paid so very much to host them all.

Four mornings after Petyr had joined her for a ride, the sky was swollen with the promise of an impending storm. It was a velvet stretch of deep grey, the sun’s warmth well-concealed behind wispy screens of winter cloud. From his window Petyr watched as Sansa left the stables, as she did most every morning. There was a certain tenseness to his muscles, a tightness to his hands which made penning his missives quite irritating. Long fingers massaged over hand and palm, one and then the other, as Sansa and her escorts rode off into the dreary grey, until all that was left was a long, anonymous trail of tracks left in the snow.

“‘Tis beginning to snow, m'lady,” a fully fledged knight of the Vale by the name of Ser Malcolm called out to Sansa. Surely, she had already noticed. From the sky drifted down thick, wet flakes, most unpleasant, and in no time at all the party would be soaked through, or at least such was the tone of voice and urgency that Ser Malcolm seemed to impart with his warning. “We would do best to head back; I will not be accused of the Lady catching an illness!” He was a seasoned ser, with faded blonde hair that hung down over a heavy brow. Age had caused his skin to sag and his eyes to darken, but it was easy enough to see how, in his youth, he would have been considered handsome. One of his sons had been quite taken with Sansa, but was a shy fellow, and had barely spoken to her. This had annoyed Ser Malcolm intensely, for there was nothing he enjoyed less than wintering at someone else’s home. Most especially when it was under the hogwash of courting some tart. He missed his wife and the spices she used in the stew she made for him. Definitively, he had also decided that he did not approve of all of the to-do surrounding this Stark girl. A lovely lass she was, but he’d seen lovelier.

Sansa’s mare was stretching its neck, long and thick and corded over with muscle, to nibble at frost-laden buds which had never chanced at opening.  When the fiery-haired lass did not immediately respond, Ser Malcolm sighed, a puff of frosty air escaping from between long, thin lips. “My lady–” he called again, this time more firmly.

The silence which followed was of an eerie sort, and lasted for no longer than a second. But it was crisp, clear, utterly unforgettable. No doubt it was only further punctuated by the pandemonium which erupted just after. The screaming whistle of an arrow, shot exquisitely through Ser Malcolm’s throat. The rearing of his horse, the crunch of his body falling into snow, the cries of the other two men as they drew their steel and cast alerted looks this way and that. But there was no sense to it all, for you see, in no time at all they were cast down in a similar manner, with bright red blood spurting from their necks and seeping into the Vale-emblazoned tunics colored that lovely Arryn blue.

It was about such a time that Sansa’s own horse, instantly smelling a richness of copper and iron in the air, began to panic as well, doing that dance that horses are prone to when they are spooked, their eyes wide and black and glossed over by animal instinct. It cried out – a horrible sound – and Sansa may have noticed nothing at all except for the force of gravity pulling her down, down, down from her mount and into the hands of…what? They were astonishingly adept, those hands, thick and calloused and wrapped in straps of well-worn leather with remnants of fur. The hands reached around her, ensnaring her, covering her mouth and half of her face with their largeness, stifling her cries, and carrying her away. Far, far away. Across rivers and across great fields, until the shade of the great mountains swallowed them whole.

The snow continued to fall, thicker and wetter, erasing away opportunistic tracks, dusting over the bodies of three fallen men of the Vale.

One could rarely expect rewards for deeds which often lay cloaked in deceitful shrouds, true motive and meaning tucked away in favor of any small advantage gained. Sansa guessed as best she could at the Lord’s final agenda; perhaps her expected recompense, then, grew from a failure to thwart unspoken plans. Yet here Baelish stumbled into self-same trap, man and girl anticipating an excess of honesty to match their own obfuscation. So long as he spoke in riddles, ill-defined omens of hardship alongside firm entreaties for trust, she could no more offer him gratitude than he might grant the particular reassurance of security for which Sansa hungered. Not since the evening in Arryn’s library had she spoken frankly to any listener. It was a long passage of time for a girl preoccupied with truths and lies, once so adamant in whispered tones that Petyr was not really her father. No matter the depth of her longing, though, Sansa would greet obscurity in kind. 

Even as he looked down the Lord doubtless missed how one gloved hand twitched, as if its Lady might have expected a warm clasp or knuckled kiss before departure. Her own smile of farewell fell altogether softer across porcelain features, summer’s gaze following his journey over drifts brightened by a rising sun until light and distance swallowed the silhouetted trio. Sansa lingered. This place, so full of life by its promise of return, seemed far holier than the abandoned godswood high above. More of the North endured within those stoic pines than ever she had felt amongst the desiccated branches of a dying weirwood. Tempting, it was, to slip down from her mount and recreate that rimy monument to home.

Without Petyr, however, she would doubtless be forced to capitulate to a guard’s chill before finishing. The girl departed her frozen hamlet on a sigh, hoarfrost and evergreen sharp and familiar between her ribs.

Back within Nestor Royce’s keep no trials assailed her. At first she wondered if Baelish’s diminished presence was what prompted their snowy interlude. Yet he never troubled himself with forewarning extended travels or unannounced guests; a few days of extended labor hardly mattered. Even as his watchful eye apparently waned — though not once did Sansa believe he was truly unaware of all her polite dalliances — she maintained the mummer’s farce. A ride at dawn before breaking her fast with Myranda, their mornings spent indoors playing at cards or cyvasse until the afternoon sun had warmed the courtyard enough to invite an audience for young, ambitious knights.

All was well, if it did not border on tedium after so much repetition.

Ser Malcolm did not usually attend her daily jaunts; whether it was herself or the cold he misliked Sansa could not discern, yet he groused just often enough to mark himself an unpalatable companion. She had noticed the gathering storm that morning from her windows, ice melting and reforming as a fire within battled against the chill without. While she did not relish the notion of returning half-frozen and wet through, neither did the possibility that others might playfully decry how easily Winter put off Stark’s heiress appeal. A short expedition, then. To that little copse Petyr had introduced her to and no further; they would surely return before a blizzard began in earnest. 

It was there her mount dallied, allowing its rider to contemplate nearby stream once more. Opalescent shimmers tricked one into thinking trout still frolicked beneath the roiling surface, though most had long since fled to warmer waters. A grimace, unseen, met the knight’s vexing plea. Leather-sheathed fingers tightened on her reins, Sansa intending to wheel about with sharp assurances as to his immunityfrom blame.

As she turned in her saddle the stream’s babble swelled to an impossible volume, a roar filling the silent vaccum.

What left her throat was instead a hoarse, strangled sound halfway between scream and gasp. She could not reconcile the carmine flowers blooming across a white canvas with her guard’s begrudging watch. A full understanding had not yet dawned when Malcolm’s two companions fell as well, stains seeping down their chests, turning falcons and moons from cream to red. A great lady knew how to behave at tournaments. But this was no tourney, the men who lay dying upon the ground no strangers forgotten by spectators and bards alike. Sansa knew them, as surely as she knew no one now stood between herself and fourth arrow.

That knowledge came too late.

Beneath her the horse began to panic, head tossing as breath left its nostrils in great snorts of steam. The beast paid no heed to the digging of her heels or the pull of a bit. As Sansa opened her mouth to scream, call out for help from the distant Gates, the animal seemed to throw her, though she never flew up, only down, down, down. A man — or men — had pulled her from the saddle, the stink of sour milk and rotted meat clinging to the rags they wore. Valiantly she struggled, screaming against a dirt-streaked palm, reaching out to claw indiscriminately even as a muscled arm caught her up in a great bear hug. Under velvet skirts both legs twisted and thrashed to no avail. A lady did not fight or resist, her strengths well beyond the scope of physical confrontation. Even had her suspicions arisen sooner, Sansa still possessed no hope of rescue.

Desperate, she tried to bite down on the hand which stifled every cry, teeth catching a tiny fold of skin. Whoever held her grunted, a mumbled curse and renewed grip his only acknowledgement of her success. Sansa tried again. Now the hold around her middle tightened, each breath a painful struggle as a greasy thumb and forefinger pinched at her nose.

It felt just like falling asleep, only she had never felt so afraid under her furs. They were carrying her somewhere, and quickly. As her sight turned hazy, to grey, to black, Sansa caught the faintest glimpse of the Giant’s Lance, disappearing from view.

petyrbaelishs:

“Which would you have as Lord of Winterfell, Snow? The smiler or the slayer?“ Jon said, “Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.”

⊰ wctcher ⊱

     Her tone of voice made him look up from the training schedule he had been working on; something in her voice spoke to a disappointment deeper than the one he had felt. He had expected better from her, certainly, but it was all another lesson in the end. No more than that. Yet her words were laced with a deeper disillusionment with herself, a lack of belief in her own capabilities. He gestured at her to take a seat at the long table, his features kinder than a moment before; there were more ways to teach than through strict disapproval alone.

     “ You could indeed have done better. And you will, next time. The girls are unharmed, are they not? We are all trying to make do with the resources we have, Sansa. But it is vital you are honest yourself, and with me. If you cannot handle your group of… Slayerettes…. you must tell me, and I will have you reassigned. ”

      He folded his hands together, waiting patiently for her reply. He believed in her, but it would do no good if she did not believe in herself.

     Storied surname imposed far more than wealth or recognition upon one so young; with that lone harsh syllable came expectation, the weight of history bearing down on a girl too young to understand all it held. Every failure, no matter how minuscule, felt as though Sansa spat on that legacy most revered. She knew no instructor could ever experience such dissatisfaction over a pupil, knew her anger and self-pity served no useful purpose. Yet time and again the girl returned to them, soothing talismans that offered a sort of perverse comfort on her days of lowest, and highest, achievement. 

       Reluctantly she joined Giles, sinking into a chair, leather creaking at its studs. Sansa hardly relaxed into its welcoming cushion before every hair prickled with alarm. Reassigned? Was asking his way of setting forth a command, the notion of a gentle let-down all he could offer as she slunk away, defeated, useless?

       “I don’t want another assignment,” she bit out between gritted teeth. Another moment, a deep breath, and she found her composure. With great effort, shoulders drawn taut relaxed, hands folding in a mirror of the Watcher’s posture. “I just want to get it right. I hate that we have to make do at the expense of others’ lives…I just wish there was a better way…”

⊰ ironhostaged ⊱

@silkssongsandchivalry

    _{“Ought to be enough to make some proper gloves, don’t you think?” He hoisted up the two brown rabbits he’d managed to kill on his morning hunt, a cheeky sort of grin plastered on his face. “Maybe you’ll be needin’ some if winter is really coming.”} 

    Courtesy faltered, stumbling over the bloodied, matted fur hanging in triumph from an Ironborn fist. Only Arya desired to know every gruesome detail of a hunt; her elder sister remained quite content with cooked meat and clean pelts. “Father never lies,” she told him delicately, head craning in appraisal. “I suppose they will do quite nicely Theon, thank you. Of course, a tanner shall have to properly tend them first.” At her side fingers drummed, rejecting any notion of handling the creatures themselves.

lottewrites:

HAMILTON : AN AMERICAN MUSICAL  → STARTERS

• ❛ he was longing for something to be a part of. ❜
  
• ❛ and the world is gonna know your name. ❜
  
• ❛ there’s a million things i haven’t done, but just you wait. ❜
  
• ❛ you never learned to take your time. ❜
  
• ❛ talk less…smile more. ❜
  
• ❛ who’s the best? c’est moi! ❜
  
• ❛ the plan is to fan this spark into a flame. ❜
  
• ❛ i’m not throwing away my shot. ❜
  
• ❛ i may not live to see our glory, but i will gladly join the fight !  ❜
  
• ❛ they’ll tell the story of tonight. ❜
  
• ❛ tomorrow there’ll be more of us. ❜
  
• ❛ i’m looking for a mind at work. ❜
  
• ❛ look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now. ❜
  
• ❛ oh my god. tear this dude apart. ❜
  
• ❛ i will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love… ❜
  
• ❛ dying is easy, young man… living is harder. ❜
  
• ❛ then you walked in and my heart went ‘boom’! ❜
  
• ❛ you look at me and suddenly i’m helpless. ❜
  
• ❛ i am so into you. ❜
  
• ❛ i’m just saying if you really loved me, you would share him. ❜
  
• ❛ love doesn’t discriminate from the sinners and the saints. ❜
  
• ❛ i’m willing to wait for it. ❜
  
• ❛ i am the one thing in life i can control. ❜
  
• ❛ call me son one more time —…. ❜
  
• ❛ i don’t pretend to know the challenges you’re facing. ❜
  
• ❛ that would be enough. ❜
  
• ❛ and we could be enough. ❜
  
• ❛ let me a part of the narrative in the story they will write one day. ❜
  
• ❛ you have no control : who lives, who dies, who tells your story. ❜
  
• ❛ history has its eyes on you. ❜
  
• ❛ awesome. wow. ❜
  
• ❛ i’ll make the world safe and sound for you. ❜
  
• ❛ why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room? ❜
  
• ❛ what’d i miss? ❜
  
• ❛ run away with us for the summer. ❜
  
• ❛ take a break. ❜
  
• ❛ well, hate the sin, love the sinner. ❜
  
• ❛ no one else was in the room where it happened. ❜
  
• ❛ and then we’ll teach them how to say goodbye. ❜
  
• ❛ we both know what we know. ❜
  
• ❛ i will choose her happiness over mine every time. ❜
  
• ❛ god, i hope you’re satisfied. ❜
  
• ❛ i saved every letter you wrote me. ❜
  
• ❛ you built me palaces out of paragraphs. ❜
  
• ❛ be careful with that one, love, he will do what it takes to survive. ❜
  
• ❛ when you were mine, the world seemed to burn. ❜
  
• ❛ the world has no right to my heart. ❜
  
• ❛ i hope that you burn. ❜
  
• ❛ everything is legal in new jersey… ❜
  
• ❛ i’m so sorry for forgetting what you taught me. ❜
  
• ❛ it’s quiet uptown. ❜
  
• ❛ they are trying to do the unimaginable. ❜
  
• ❛ there are moments that the words don’t reach. ❜
  
• ❛ forgiveness. can you imagine? ❜
  
• ❛ i had only one thought before the slaughter. ❜
  
• ❛ i imagine death so much, it feels more like a memory. ❜
  
• ❛ what is a legacy? it’s planting seeds in a garden you will never see. ❜
  
• ❛ death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints. ❜
  
• ❛ i survived, but i paid for it. ❜
  
• ❛ have i done enough? will they tell my story? ❜
  

sansaregina:

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”
Joffrey scowled. “You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord.” 

sansa stark meme: 3 quotes ♦ a game of thrones - sansa vi

petyrbaelishs:

Sansa Stark + female influences ♦ requested by aliceofalonso

WHAT ARE YOUR MUSE’S AESTHETICS?

_{bold any which apply to your muse.
italicise what they like.
remember to repost and not reblog.
feel free to add to the list.}

_{fire. ice. water. air. claws. fangs. wings. gold. diamonds. grass. leaves. trees. roses. metal. iron. rust. rain. snow. laces. silk. cotton. sun. moon. stars. blood. dirt. mud. silver. steel. sugar. salt. lavender. lilacs. glass. wood. paper. wool. lead. fur. smoke. ash. ocean. bruise. scar. wind. spices. light. dark. greys. paint. charcoal. wine. hard liquor. sweat. dust. bare feet. canine. feline. dragons. coffee. tea. books. scratches. petals. thorns. hay. glitter. heat. cold. steam. frost. candle. torch. sword. dagger. arrow. hammer. shield. magic. spikes. sand. rocks. roots. feathers. pearls. rubies. sapphires. emeralds. garnet. herbs. waves. lightning. thunder. sunlight. moonlight. clay. stone.}

_{tagged by @regalae
tagging @leadingwolf @vasidra @piraticalwit @unseenmockingjay @snitchcrux @neverparted @hamndgirig}

WHAT ARE YOUR MUSE’S FEARS?

BOLD ANY FEARS WHICH APPLY TO YOUR MUSE.
ITALICIZE WHAT MAKES THEM UNCOMFORTABLE.
REMEMBER TO REPOST & NOT REBLOG.

the dark. fire. open water. deep water. being alone. crowded spaces. confined spaces. change. failure. war. loss of control. powerlessness. prison. blood. drowning. suffocation. public speaking. natural animals. the supernatural. heights. death. dying. intimacy. rejection. abandonment. loss. the unknown. the future. not being good enough. scary stories. speaking to new people. poverty. loud noises. being touched.

tagged by @motherofwolvcs
tagging @oftarth @herroyaldarkness @travmsoldat @singlasses @queenxcersei @mithraiic @regalae

soft-spoken, sweet-smelling SANSA (est. may 2013)

{ When the Cold Winds Rise }

⊰anicelybandiedword ⊱

Petyr watched her, though it was no hard-eyed stare or lust-addled gaze. It was a quiet look. Not subtle, but quiet. There was something unfamiliar about Sansa allowing him to witness her emotions, and certainly that was just so. Their language was one of masks, any shred of genuine character usually tucked away neatly behind the edges of personas carefully worn. These masks had, at times, shifted and veered crooked, perhaps once or twice they’d even been set aside entirely for the span of a sentence or conversation. Now, he believed that Sansa appeared as both what she desired and what she was, a rare moment of complimentary design.

Petyr wondered, idly, if Sansa trusted him.

“I rarely suffer anything without a reason.” A smile, as flippant and meandering as the stream before them. A deep sense of relief settled over him. Nothing had the potential to change things more than time and circumstance, and Petyr had let plenty of both come between him and his once-ward since that night in the library. Professing a somewhat idle interest to be joined in marriage amounted to very little when the alternatives remained an unsavory unknown. It amounted to even less when the interest had not been actively, or even passively, returned. Petyr had, in fact, appeared as a figure of objection. No acknowledgment from a man who had taken great liberties in the past could only be read by the common eye as objection.

Is that what Sansa believed? That Petyr Baelish had rejected her? Worse – did she no longer care if he had?

A sidelong glance was cast towards the Arryn-clad guard astride their horses some distance away. “Hardship, my lady, is the very essence of many a woman’s life. You are no exception to that, and I fear that my gifts may not always seem kind.” With a tilt to his reins, Petyr rounded his horse until they were side by side, so near that there was barely a breath spaced between their legs. “I must tell you, Sansa, that your hardships are not finished. I ask that you weather them with grace, and the knowledge that whatever you may endure will not be in vain – that I have taken every care to abide by your…thoughts, as it were.” There was a gravity to his expression, his tone. “What you want is very important to me.” More than once he had made similar declarations to her, to less than agreeable results. Harrold the Heir, Winterfell, Alayne Stone. “In whatever trials may come – I ask that you trust I have your best interests in mind.”

There it was again, that word with so many levels of meaning – did she trust him? How many countless before her had placed, and misplaced, their trust in Littlefinger to their ultimate downfall or even demise? And yet…had he not proven to her that, when it came to her, he seemed to hold true to his word? Not for any purpose of altruism, certainly; Petyr Baelish was a selfish man whose motives always traced back to his own personal preference and ambition. It meant, perhaps, that finally their interests were as close to aligned as they might ever be. Petyr’s eyes shifted over Sansa’s face, that lovely face framed by a rustle of fur and waves of red. Would that they were not accompanied by a coterie of guard, he should very much like to reach out and touch her face, prop two fingers beneath her chin, bid her to look at him, to drink in what he was saying and know it was no idle banter.

Ah, but she had always been a remarkably clever girl.

For all that she had wanted to say and share in those weeks of silence, Sansa found little difficulty in holding her tongue now. So long as Baelish presented his input as purposefully withheld the girl hungered for his advice, framed every decision in terms of pleasing him, lying awake in night’s small black hours fretting over how the Lord might grin or grimace at her conduct. Yet beside him, enveloped in natural seclusion, patience prevailed. A waggish smile could not wholly disguise spoken truths: Littlefinger took no course of action, no matter its apparent triviality, without certain assurances as to his personal benefit. He no more relished the chilly vista than she did the ceaseless entertainments demanded behind Royce’s walls, yet each endured them in hopes of a reward.

Sansa could find no benefit, however, within the unspoken farce of courtship. No man offered any greater advantage than her fallen Falcon, that much Baelish knew before a single raven left its perch. Why, then, would he squander the girl’s time on matters whose resolution could barely advance her cause, and at worst inspire further difficulties? She could only assume it was the time which he desired most. And for what? In isolation uncertainty reigned, news coming only from Randa’s salacious gossip or the whispers of those who traveled from beyond the Vale. Sansa stood no more capable of surmising the Lord’s personal intentions than she did sifting free the truth from rumors of what disasters had befallen the other six kingdoms. After her candlelit confession garnered no favorable response her sentiments shifted from shame, to fear, to anger, to an aloof nonchalance encapsulating a very real hurt at its core.Though she could not bring herself to believe this barrage of suitors meant Petyr hoped to cast her off, Sansa had thought the man’s greed — if not his skewed affections — would manifest itself in a more reliable fashion. 

Did his gifts seem cruel? Tully eyes failed to meet their wayward benefactor, instead captivated by a folded cloak. The lie of Alayne had proven necessary — and yet he could have chosen another to wear those stones. Sansa brushed such thoughts aside. Marillion had not been his doing, nor Lysa and her paranoia, nor poor little Robert’s ills. And Petyr had capitulated to her begging over certain inevitabilities with Harrold; she had been frightened, petulant, queerly protective of that which had never truly been her own, but he took precautions nonetheless. Now, all those men just awakening in the keep behind them proved her hardships had not ended. 

Mention of her thoughts — her feelings, her wishes, her request — jerked the girl’s chin up as though it rested upon a string. Could he truly mean…? “You have already demonstrated the worth of my desires, my lord.” Even in profile Baelish would see how carefully placid her expression remained: brows relaxed, mouth soft, gaze cast just to the side in sole indication of rapt attention. Leather creaked, a gloved hand wrapping tightly about gathered reins as she thought. The game continued — it had never ended — with wolf and bird perhaps as close to co-conspirators as ever their actions dictated. Voluminous tufts of fur hid the traitorous swell along her neck, pulse quickening to consider that somewhere before her lay manipulations worthy of forewarning, whose aim pointed straight to the heart of her impassioned pleas. 

Petyr would not trouble himself so over another husband; a brief meeting in his solar, before the fire, would suffice. 

“I shall,” she answered, solemn, eyes uplifted with no aid from slim fingers imprisoned at his side. “I do.” Oh, it was ever in his self-interest that greatest faith lay, though at last Baelish’s ambitions seemed to align themselves with hers. Sansa could not prevent a thrill of apprehension from racing across her heart, a flash of steely light manifest in azurine gaze. Hardship. Hardly a thing to relish, but she would endure its trials with grace, if only these shadowed acts would bring some satisfaction at their end.

{ When the Cold Winds Rise }

⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

Snow crunched under hoof, the air crisp enough to send puffs of frost from velvety equine nostrils. More than once he had watched her in those early hours from his window and the view it afforded him. Bundled in fur, all gray where she ought be red. She trailed off, morning after morning, into the boundless white, flanked afar by Eyrie guard, but never so close that she might not be allowed a sense of freedom or escape. Such was the case now; horses of the Eyrie and their riders kept a wide distance from Baelish and Stark, far greater even than when she normally rode alone.

“There is always some satisfaction to be found in travel,” he replied vaguely, clear that he did not intend to share with her the reason from his trip or what it entailed. “Though you are well aware I find no pleasure in the cold.” Petyr had said the same thing that evening in the library, had used it as a reason as to why he would not join her in the very activity they engaged in now. It meant that he wanted her away from the castle, away from any prying eyes or ears. There were gentle flakes drifting down all around them, unobtrusive and light. The woods were quiet, the silence broken only occasionally by the warble of a bird. When they neared a river, the sounds of the water flowing over rocks and through cages of ice seemed almost deafening. It was there Petyr veered towards, taking a subtle arc towards a copse of trees nestled near the stream.

“You are in your element here, are you not?” Petyr smiled; it seemed genuine. “Snow and wood and cheeks pinked by snow. Winter becomes you, my lady.” There was a certain fondness with which he regarded her, familiar, but not untoward. She looked much like she had that day in the Eyrie’s courtyard, snowflakes in her hair, surfing waves of red. The Lord held both a partiality and a dread for that day. There was a similar feeling teeming in the pit of his stomach now. A limbo stationed between recklessness and logic. A lack of control. Petyr cinched his horse’s reins, the dark beast protesting with a jerk of its head as it drummed to a halt. “To these Lords and their provincial views there is no creature lovelier than a Stark heralding winter’s coming. I do not imagine there are many who can boast of beholding that now.” Was she truly the last? So far as anyone knew. Manufactured likenesses aside – even the pretender Arya Stark was said to have been slain in the siege of Winterfell. Sansa was the only remaining vestige of a time-honored lineage; what she represented to the North and Vale alike was more than her simple claim. Had she felt it? The weight of it, now that Baelish no longer served as a buffer or bastion?

“I am interested in hearing your thoughts.” The guards who had escorted them remained at a fair distance; his words were carried away by the current of the stream’s wending and bubbling. “Do you favor any of them?” Petyr need not clarify who he meant or in what regard. The charade had been transparent enough to all involved. Was this the reason Petyr had invaded her morning ritual? To hear simple opinions on which trumped up Ser or Lord she might humor in a pairing? Surely not. “You have bewitched them…the lot of them.” Poorly, Petyr concealed some measure of malcontent at that notion. For half a second his mouth pulled into something like a grimace. “You will have your pick.” Petyr turned to her, his fingers lacing idly into the black of his horse’s mane. There was expectancy there, as though he waited for her to thank him, to show her gratitude at his obvious generosity. That precious gift of choice – was it not what she had always wanted?

She had hoped to remain inscrutable, provide no meaningful hint towards her disposition until Baelish made clear the reason for his uncharacteristic expedition. Perhaps therein lay the crux of disadvantage between wolf and bird — where Sansa often strove to conceal, the lord achieved such obfuscation effortlessly. So the faintest scowl followed her knowing smirk — of course he detests the cold — a delay of that familiarity he had already chosen to deny. A nightingale’s song rebounded sharply off frozen boughs, notes tumbling one over the other in such rapid succession one could never guess in which tree it nested. The girl’s face craned skyward, eyes roving curiously over snow-logged limbs. She had never explored this particular copse before, not wanting the dark, jagged fingers of pine to beckon her guards closer, preferring more open spaces to roam. 

Though weighed by expectation the silence between them carried no tension. That first glower Sansa intended solely for herself, their meandering journey otherwise unmarred. “I have never known a true Winter.” Summer snows carried with them more nuisance than menace, seemingly gifted by the gods for chilly battles in the courtyard and castles built of ice. The Winter faced now would look upon North and South alike with implacable hunger, great drifts of white which would undoubtedly swallow all with ravenous abandon. Sansa felt not at all in her element against such force warned against in family words, yet now, when flakes still fell softly, when poetry lingered in a graying world, she could pretend. 

You’re crusted over with snow like some little bear cub… Distant words rushed down from mountain’s peak. But your face is flushed and you can scarcely breath…Let me warm you… Gloved hands curled tighter about her reins. In that dark, abandoned courtyard lay sole anchor to the truth, a moment whose impetuousness Sansa still believed despite every other machination in the following months. Lacking now was that hunger, instead glazed over with a shimmering veneer of civility. Did he mean to unbalance her? Remind her? Uncertainty often bred praise, compliments and flattery perfectly suitable diversions from hesitation. Yet the moment passed, silent, paltry words on how dashing or at ease he looked lost as she drew her mount to a halt. “Nor I.” Loss forever clung in burdensome reminder to her heart, a tumor whose pressing weight she could forget only by consigning thoughts of it to the same small place in which she kept memories of Marillion and Joffrey and Lysa. Hungry looks from gathered suitors threatened to bring it to the fore, staved off by sheer will alone. 

Though she had learned of these men’s histories and hopes, made each of them feel welcome in her new home, still none had managed to distinguish themselves in any meaningful way. “My thoughts— ?” Surely Petyr could see her egalitarian treatment for what it was: a rejection of them all, or at the very least a refusal to offer any preference that might spur action. A flutter of red and Sansa glanced towards him, watching as remnants of displeasure faded from pursed lips. “You have gathered an impressive court,” she murmured, steel swathed in soft words. “But my thoughts have not changed.” For what could any of them offer her, that she had not already chosen to see in the Mockingbird? A Northern marriage brought no great advantage, a father’s lords already pledged by right of blood. The Vale hovered on a precipice of disarray after Harrold’s sacrifice, any choice within its families as much a gamble as a calculation. Downward she gazed, thumb tracing along a howling wolf’s maw with deliberate idleness. Baelish had gone to great trouble, great expense, to gather so many choices in convenient reach. Was she ungrateful? The river nearly swallowed her next words whole, a pensive stare lending pale features the faintest cast of melancholy in dawn’s gentle light. “Unless you have a need to hear them again, my lord, then I fear you have suffered the cold for naught.”