Oh, would that he were able to tempt her out of paradise, to draw her
down into the depths of a hell-filled reality. He had tried, hadn’t he?
He’d all but asked her to forsake it all, everything, in favor of
him. Greedy to his rotten core, none of it mattered to him. The games,
the charade, the endless masquerade of feelings and motivations and
truths – none of them mattered. Only she did. Only Sansa.
But
it was not so simple. A love like Baelish’s was neither pure nor
selfless. It was love, to be sure, in the way that Petyr stood capable
of loving. But how did a creature such as he learn to love? What had
become of his family? Once he had mentioned his father to her. Only
once. What of a mother? Did he have siblings? Lovers? Oh, certainly he’d
had those, but had they ever meant anything to him? Sansa knew
so little about Petyr, and in that vein perhaps her love for him was as
shallow as his. Perhaps she loved merely the idea of him, the
older, wiser, damaged creature who had rescued her, ticking off her need
to nurture, and also her need to be cared for. Sansa appealed to Petyr
in at least so far as she had resembled her mother – he’d told her as
much. But Catelyn had never resembled Sansa in personality, Catelyn had
been entirely different as a girl. Catelyn had never gone into the
Arena. Catelyn had never watched her family die all around her, falling
down like the trees in the ever-dwindling forests of Seven. Catelyn had
been an innocent.
But Catelyn had never looked at Petyr the way Sansa did.
That
put Sansa at a disadvantage, some would argue. Men like Petyr enjoyed
giving chase, enjoyed a challenge, enjoyed being made to work for it.
How great was the intensity in his gaze whenever it was Sansa denied Petyr something he wanted compared to the moments in which she simply offered?
From the very beginning it had been Sansa who had pursued him
physically, offering her body time and again, freely and without clause.
The need to fill the emptiness each felt with physicality had, perhaps
organically, grown into something more, but had he ever really wanted her, as he sometimes claimed he did?
Petyr
sucked in a breath through his teeth, lifting off of her just barely as
Sansa’s hands clawed beneath his shirt, drawing it up. She spoke,
parroting his words back to him with far more feeling and sincerity than
he’d mustered, and a sudden sensation of guilt pitted his stomach.
Promises to do anything he wanted washed over him like a warm
surf, and were she any other woman, or he any other man, no doubt such
an offer would have spurned one or the other into a desirous frenzy,
minds flooded with every depraved and filthy act not yet realized
between the pair. Baelish only felt nonplussed. Past experiences proved
such an offer to be entirely false, both in terms of sex and the relationship that existed beyond it. Sansa did not stand even remotely capable of giving Baelish anything that he wanted, let alone what he needed.
Baelish
straightened his arms, pushing himself away from Sansa, looking down at
her. His eyes searched her face for some indication of what she meant, or if she even knew what it was she intended to say, but he knew it wasn’t that. “Nothing,” he replied, one corner of his mouth twitching upward. “I don’t want anything.” I want for nothing.
Lie after lie after lie, each one painted in a new garish shade
overlapping the last until everything between them was smeared in neon
streaks, a crude amalgamation of failed expectations and lost desires.
Petyr, of course, wanted the very opposite of nothing; Petyr wanted everything,
wanted it all, wanted to take and take and take from her until she had
nothing left to give. He would, he imagined, if given enough time. This
was because the things he wanted most of all Sansa would not give, would
not ever give, and in her fundamental refusal, it left him bitter, vengeful, hate-filled. They were all monsters, every last one of them. Especially him.
“But since you’re offering…”
And
she was. Her face was flush and her mouth was parted, and she lifted
her hips against him speaking to him in the only language she knew how.
Baelish would answer. When his eyes met hers they had darkened, be it by
lust or greed or the surge of adrenaline following the heady rush of
power she’d just given him. Arms bowed back again, his face nearing, his
words low and coarse:
Sansa tried toremember how it had led to this, memory sluggish in current state. Keep-away. She had stolen a tie as he packed, finely woven silk of thread which gleamed jade, then silver, dependent upon the light; when she remarked on it Baelish explained that their dear escort often bid him wear it, a dashing accessory meant to bring out his eyes. In all their time together he rarely deemed any item essential to his packing — whatever one needed, the Capitol could supply it as readily, and far more fashionably, than any counterpart acquired within district boundaries. With a juvenile cry of glee she snatched it away, racing halfway down the stairs before realizing Petyr did not pursue.
should an exclusive partner go inactive for 1+ month, then i will become tentatively open to interactions with duplicates. when/if they return then exclusivity may resume.
