{ 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.

{ 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.”

{ When the Cold Winds Rise }

⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

There were no further discussions on the matters discussed that evening in the high library of the Eyrie. Not of suitors, not of gowns, not of a whispered notion of a pairing between Baelish and Stark. They were left behind, like the keep itself, sealed away in the tomb of winter. The last remaining inhabitants of the Vale’s ancestral castle traveled down the narrow paths slicked by ice, seeking respite from winter at the Gates of the Moon. Entrenched in frost, the pale blue of Arryn’s house still whipped in carnal flag atop the Falcon Tower. As High as Honor. Ensconced there, Petyr’s priorities seemed to take on a drastic shift as he busied himself with Nestor Royce and the readying of the Gates to serve as proper host. Sansa Stark – Widow Stark – was left to her own devices.

Ravens were sent out daily, entire flocks released into the winter snows, which came down in a never-ending shower of soft, white flakes that made every tree and trellis glitter as though they had been meticulously crafted from rare crystal. The food was better, the company better still; gone were the days of long, empty tables fashioned only for two. Baelish dined with Nestor Royce and his family, along with other important men who seemed to arrive more by the day from far and obscure houses – Melcolm and Grafton, Longthorpe and Pryor – until the great hall was filled by men, its table seating all of them with no room to spare. At great expense these men were fed and housed, the torchlights of the Gates gleaming brightly at all hours, the washerwomen murmuring under their breaths as to the extent of their exhaustive duties.

Petyr Baelish wooed the Vale. He plied its Lords with Dornish Red and spiced meats, he curried their favor with gifts of rare spices, and in whispers they spoke of trading tracts of fertile land. Debts were bought, or rather, gambled away at all hours of the night to howls of wine-fueled laughter. Grievances were forgiven. All matters were under consideration for a man who no longer had the face of the Young Falcon to glide forward with. Harrold’s death affected all.

Sansa, most of all.

They loved her, as they always had. They loved her red hair and her white-as-snow skin. They loved how she smiled and how well-spoken she was. They loved her clever tongue and her demure elegance. Most of all, they loved her grief. Petyr watched her, always from behind the rim of a cup or with a slanted glance, observing her, observing who observed her. Nights were spent recounting every look, tucking away each iota of interest expressed, shuffling about expectations and mulling over which conversation would need be next had. This continued for days. Weeks. Only with the arrival of two men in particular, however – Gawen Glover and Brandon Tallhart – did the plans of Petyr Baelish become abundantly clear.

So many nights spent locked alone in his solar, letters written and ink-stained fingers wiped carefully clean so that he might stare into the hypnotic undulation of his hearth. He had not dismissed the idea of marrying Sansa to a Northerner. It seemed as though he had not even dismissed the idea of marrying Sansa to another Ser from the Vale. All who hoped to charm the Princess of Winterfell were humored; none were turned away with disappointment. Whatever game Petyr was playing at was had entirely at Sansa’s expense. Though he did not instruct her one way or the other, never pulling her aside to gauge whom she liked best, never hinting as to what color gown she ought don, or whose hand she ought take first in dance. It was left entirely to her, which could only mean that Petyr cared not at all who she picked, that it was all a ruse, a grand pageantry and nothing more, held for the benefit of those in attendance.

Petyr distanced himself from Sansa in a visible way, no longer holding conversations as Sansa’s benefactor, or on her behalf. It was no longer the Mockingbird who was posed to broker a marriage between Sansa and whomever she chose. That duty was hers alone. This illusion of agency was essential. Though it was, to be sure, only an illusion.

One evening a scroll was brought to him still rolled, a royal seal pressed in wax unbroken. Curious looks and furtive whispers followed the Lord as he excused himself from the comfortable revelry to read it in private. Under the cover of dawn the following morning, shadows swooping with gusts of frosted breath, Petyr Baelish left the Gates of the Moon. He did not return for seven days. On the night of, as the peach-colored alpenglow died and darkness tightened, the Lord returned with a flurry of fresh, powdery snow. The dull horns heralded him, the gatehouse alight with the churning of frozen chains. Some hours later, as the sconces began to smolder and the halls emptied of conversation in favor of bed and rest, Petyr climbed the stone steps to Sansa’s room. Flanked on either side by guards, for never would he be flippant enough to grant her that reprieve. A soft rapping of knuckles fell to her door, so soft it would not have awoken someone already asleep, but may have stole the attention of one who lingered in that space of tenuous wakefulness.

She did not come to answer. The Lord left.

The morning after was soft and warm. Aurulent rays fell in ethereal shimmers across the snow-blanketed hills and forested valleys below. “My lady!” Petyr called. Ah, and it was early enough still for there to be sunflower yellow planes cast upon the highest peaks of the Eyrie, sparking so bright they nearly blinded. In such a light she looked almost unfamiliar, so used he had grown to seeing her only by way of torch and hearth, swathed in a fine array of vibrant gowns – any color she pleased. Now she sat atop her horse, ready to ride into the snowy wood. The copper in her hair shone brightly, bleeding red, bleeding ruby. Tired of the snow she had become. Tired, no doubt, of the constant swirl of suitors and regurgitated pleasantries. An escape seemed only natural. How lovely she looked in her furred cloak and tall boots. The reins of her horse had been stitched with tiny direwolves in an elegant gray. “My lady,” he repeated, nearing her, the long black rider’s cloak sweeping about his calves. On his hands were fitted firmly a set of fine leather gloves. “Would you care for company?” It didn’t seem her answer made any difference; already his horse was being led out of the stables, saddle and tackle ready as though he’d previously planned to interrupt her. “It is a lovely day for it.”

Riding? Or company?

Abandonment by her protector seemed less dire when inflicted at the lower altitude of Lord Royce’s Gates, for there Lysa’s jealousy and paranoia had never spread. Serving girls and stable boys bustled about with the importance of those who found purpose in their tasks. Knights trained in sword and bow, squires huddled beneath frost-bitten furs, grumbling with resentment at every errand. Sansa sometimes found herself seated before an open window, eyes closed as she tried to force the stream of cries and shouts and chatter into a river leading northward, leading home, to no avail. Although the lower keep pulsed with life absent at mountain’s peak, the lady’s pursuits remained much the same, unchanged in all save perhaps the company entertained. She entered no negotiations, suggested no strategies, invited no visitors of her own. A honored guest the widowed Lady Stark was — but a guest nonetheless.

Amidst such growing vibrancy few would think to question the natural distance between Baelish and Stark. With both Harrold’s ascendancy and the farce of Alayne Stone brought to an end their public ties grew tenuous, continuation excused perhaps by custom or chivalrous intent. She had confided in no one the secret of their candlelit rendezvous and as she settled into yet another home, Sansa wondered if her proposition had not been some mad dream, a hallucination spun by the exhausted mind of one constantly in search of control. How foolish, to reveal just what the Mockingbird might receive if he asked it! And yet as callers first trickled, then flooded through Royce’s courtyard the impact of a midnight entreaty lessened, until she truly did believe her honesty changed none of the Lord’s shadowed plans. 

Made tentative by both a husband’s recent death and her guide’s stalwart silence, she granted no one her special favor. A careful observer might note that where one knight was granted a particularly dazzling smile, a minor lord enjoyed the pleasure of an encouraging hand upon his arm. Still another heard her chiming laugh, whilst his friend would later brag of the long dance he shared with Lady Sansa that evening. Beneath her parity lurked an artistry of grace — every name and sigil remembered, dozens of individual conversations recalled upon second meeting, each first-born son and squire and land-holding guest made to feel as though it was he, and he alone, with whom Sansa Stark most desired to spend her time. When courtly matters turned towards, less feminine pastimes, gambling and intoxication and lewd conduct, what exhaustion she felt after taking her leave fell swift and heavy upon the girl. A startling apathy settled upon her as well; in striving to please all comers, Sansa found no spirit left for pleasing herself. 

Riding provided a rare, much cherished respite. At Winterfell Arya’s superior skills had soured any enthusiasm she might have nurtured as a young girl; under Cersei’s watchful eye she could enjoy little more than a trot about cobbled yards; and high above the Vale of Arryn horses had no place. Only now, whilst the snows drifted soft and slow from greying skies, could Sansa enjoy the freedom of a saddle and reins. She rode with neither purpose nor expectation, ranging so far as blue-swathed guards allowed. Indeed, only after the arrival of Glover and Tallhart did the ruby-haired wolf grant any calculation at all to her relaxing jaunts. 

You ride as prettily as a Southroner, Gawen said in greeting one afternoon. Though he helped her from the saddle, smiling, the condemnation did not fall upon deaf ears. For all the love they bore still Sansa remained an idea, an ideal, to those gathered. A beautiful pale face framed in waves of red, riverine eyes that could inspire singers, ancient blood from which kings might rise. A Daughter of the North…suspiciously cloaked in southron ways. 

She took to riding at every sunrise then, venturing out in longer and longer expeditions as she tried to summon from memory Hullen’s lessons, the praise Harwin sang of Arya and their Aunt Lyanna. Glover’s words ought to have meant nothing. Far more grievous insults had assailed the Stark girl and garnered only polite, enduring silence, yet this — this festered. Lannister, Stone, and Hardyng were names discarded as readily as yesterday’s gowns, temporary hardships which would never wholly swallow the truth. She was a Stark, and could allow no question of it any longer.

Already absent in all but form, Baelish’s departure passed with no apparent detriment to his former ward. Every day she rode, every night she entertained with the unfailing courtesy of a noble hostess. Yet even so total an occupation did not prevent Sansa from mulling over the timing of such a missive, the speed with which he answered it, nor the emblem raised in waxen seal. Such exertions left the girl understandably spent, however, despite her curiosity; a true, deep slumber masked the Lord’s hushed request for an audience upon his return. 

Caught unawares, she was then, when on the following morn an ebon-cloaked Baelish came jauntily striding across the yard. Surprise registered in the faint ‘oh’ of her mouth, caught on frigid inhalation, and how blue rings contracted around the black pinpricks of her pupils. Did he notice that she sat straighter now, those finely-stitched reins held with an imperious ease rather than the faint tension of one fearing a tumble? “You have missed several fine days in the Vale, Lord Baelish. It would be shameful of you to forgo another.” She would not, could not refuse him. Did Petyr mean to confide in her at last? Sansa smiled down at the stable boy as he brought the Lord’s horse up beside hers. “I did not know you had returned,” she told him. “You found satisfaction in your travels, I trust?” No sooner was he settled than Sansa dug a gentle heel into her mount. They trotted from the keep at a comfortable pace, slow enough that she could not withstand the persistent urge to cast Tully eyes in sidelong glances toward unexpected company, unreadable in patrician profile.

⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

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⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

Highborn girls from highborn families who concerned themselves with embroidery and courtesies and how best to sip their soups were rarely given the sort of treatment as those who had been raised by devout servants of the Faith. Those girls – girls like Alayne Stone – were carved to rigid completion under the harsh kiss of the switch and reed. Any ankle exposed was soon to be snapped back beneath the hem of a skirt; a set of slumping shoulders would receive a harsh lash at the base of the neck; unkempt nails were wont to inspire rosy knuckles split by braided tether. Obedience and piety were valued above all. Alayne’s transgressions, then, were most severe, and would be treated appropriately as such. 

From across the room Baelish’s gaze followed each of Sansa’s steps as she moved to position herself firmly braced against the desk. Standing. Oh, that simply would not do. The smile playing over Petyr’s lips did not waver, but grew further still, his eyes falling down the form of her body, following the rucks of her gown where they gathered near her feet. “A valued change from your earlier opposition, Alayne.” A step, then another, and Baelish was beside her, looking down the line of her shoulder, his head tilted so that he might best observe her face. “I appreciate your sudden eagerness to obey, but the form is all wrong I’m afraid.” Just barely, she would feel his touch at her back; a gentle press of fingers came before the full weight of his palm. “The angle must be severe…the skin stretched taut. And…your skirts, my dear. Draw them up.” There was pressure, then, and he was guiding her down to bend at the waist, encouraging her cheek to kiss the well-polished wood of his desk.  "You are meant to feel it, are you not?“ The skirts, however, he left to her. He would not dare be accused of impropriety, after all.

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⊰ anicelybandiedword ⊱

Baelish chuckled. In his grasp the wine goblet slowly rotated, etched silver catching the light of the fire in winking glint. “How prudent of you.” How superstitious; he found her cautionary whims of groundless matters amusing. Incredulity and fears towards Harrenhal’s curse, of old gods and their cruel favoritism, of fortune tellers and their swindling tongues – all such matters of inherent gullibility made her somehow more innocent. More child-like. How possibly could he forget she was still just a girl? “Surely you must have been curious? What does this world hold for Alayne Stone?” From across the room he stared at her, his eyes deceptive in their undazzled vagaries. A single tap of his index finger against the cup rang out mutedly with a metallic ting; it was all that came in reply to her ungracious statement regarding jealousy and its most severe manifestations. It seemed to cause a shift in his very person, a darkening of gaze and a heavier set to his shoulders. Sansa challenged him with dangerous reckonings, playing with the very fire she decried. Did she truly think herself immune to his murderous machinations – or did she simply not care? Her willingness to not only defy him but to flaunt her defiance rankled him. Bold, she grew, under the dark dye of another identity, believing herself to be safety buried beneath layers of peasant skirts and an unwashed face. That look he gave her was flinty and utterly unfamiliar. 

She knew him less than he believed if still she knew not what pleased him. Stolen kisses in the snow; uninvited touches and broken barriers; the unbidden hitches of her breath. “Events not taking an unexpected turn, not having to make excuses for or cover the sloppy tracks of wayward daughters…obedience and respect. All such things satisfy me. All such things please me.” Towards the fire and its sinuously weaving flames his eyes slanted. A frown furrowed. “I find your antics equal parts irritating and disappointing. Though I suppose it is fair for you to test your limits.” Given whose daughter she was either afforded her more latitude or less – depending on who you might ask. Only one person’s opinion on the matter mattered.

“However, as much as I might appreciate your pithy bid at independence I cannot allow you to escape such blatant disregard of my wishes without reprisal. Alayne…” he paused. “You well know of the Faith’s dislike for disobedience, mm? Natural that a girl who grew up in care of the sept would understand the need for correction? More than most, I am certain.” The cup was again set down, Baelish’s hand rising to finger at his beard just beneath a blossoming smile. The curtain of their ruse was heavily draped, and Baelish stepped back out from around his desk, standing only just beside it. “Would you please submit yourself to proper consequence?” With a helpful gesture of his hand in graceful flourish he motioned for her to step near, and, indeed, to present herself for punishment. “Over the desk will be fine.” It was obvious then what he meant for her to do, and what he intended for her consequence to be. The smile on his face told her he had planned for this outcome all along.

No crone however aged and wise could predict the future of a ghost. Indeed, Alayne Stone stood as even less than spectral figure, never having died, never having lived; she spun on and on, a story currently caught up in its telling, past and present and future all known to their creator alone. If Baelish would only give some hint as to when intersecting lines of Stone and Stark might at last diverge again, perhaps such youthful restlessness would find in his assurances placation. Every plan divulged dealt in uncertainty, dependent upon a boy’s affections, rippling consequences of actions which would not come to light for weeks to come. Though possessing great discretion — alongside that healthy fear of royal reprisal — learn’d manners still might pale when confronted by a young woman’s needs. Since departing Winterfell the girl bore many chains: first golden, binding her in holy promise to a prince; then silvery, befitting high-born captive; at last the brassy insult of marriage to a dwarf, before submitting herself to the base metal of bastardy after fugitive flight. Little wonder, mayhaps, that what scraps Petyr fed his muzzled wolf could entirely assure her unwavering cooperation. 

Frustration guided her tongue far more than ignorance. Oh, well did Sansa know what best pleased her self-interested rescuer; yet to speak aloud of inappropriate colors and gems boded less danger than to recall how his lips had tasted upon hers. Control. That above all else satisfied Petyr Baelish. A rounded and buffed nail, soiled by the thinnest line of dirt from her afternoon excursion, picked at inlaid jewel; when merriment ended ‘twas easier to acknowledge, silently, what risk she had assumed for them both. Obediently did fair blue eyes descend, regarding rush-strewn floors with the girl’s first showing of remorse. Winter’s swift arrival certainly aided her contrition, swearing off future transgressions simplified by lack of opportunity. A few evenings of meager suppers, a father’s punishing silence — those Sansa could abide in exchange for her few hours spent twirling beneath an autumn sun. 

“Correction?” She looked up. Septa Mordane chastised her charge rarely, more oft than not setting lines or recitation to clear a child’s mind of raucous distraction. Yet such a smile would not grace the lord’s mouth for cursive repetitions from the Seven-Pointed Star, nor would he find such delight in hours of prayerful reflection. I shall find some common girl to take your whipping… Mortification burned hot as coals upon both cheeks, the flush trickling down her throat, her nape, her chest. Sansa clutched the goblet nearer her waist, gaze darting from Petyr’s growing satisfaction to the scattering of scrolls and books across his desk. She mustn’t cause a scene; not when he presented himself with such cool gallantry in the face of her deception, more understanding than many father’s might dare. Her steps rang sharply through cool air, amplified by high stone walls and quiet expectation. Turning as though she might take Baelish’s seat the girl set aside her drink, well beyond arm’s reach, leaving both palms flat atop smooth wood-grain. Tall for her age, such a pose necessitated a slight bend to her waist, though only that — and a rosy blush — betrayed how readily she understood what would best please him.

{ Each the Other’s World Entire }

⊰anicelybandiedword ⊱

Hunger had a way of breaking a man down. Travel became less practical, the distance covered growing less each day. Time must be spent setting snares, and more taking them down when they lured nothing into their grasp. Petyr suffered. They both suffered. Streams were helpful for filling their bellies and temporarily tricking the body into believing it was sated, but their stomachs grew distended, the sloshing of liquid causing only further discomfort and a forced, premature need to stop. And thus began the erosion of self. Little mattered in the face of hunger. The warmth of the sun or another body pressed against you, the frozen gust of midnight’s chill wind, the snapping of a twig in the distance all became meaningless in the dizzying reality of a world bereft of nourishment. The mind tricked, coerced, whispering notions that the logical mind would reject: moss, bark, roots all became edible things no matter the toxic ache or sickness they produced later. In that desperation the honed, sharpened mind grew dull and sloppy, crashing through the underbrush where before it would have silently maneuvered.

More than once, Petyr thought of leaving Sansa behind. It ran constantly through his mind, again and again, weathering a stomped path. Once when he awoke in the night, a terrible pain in his gut where nourishment ought be, he thought of strangling her. An understanding, even an empathetic sympathy grew for those who had long ago turned to cannibalism as a form of survival. For surely anything, anything would be better than that feeling of ultimate emptiness, desperation, horror that came from a lack of food.

It was for such a reason that Sansa’s discovery did not immediately bring panic to the man who barely clung to reason. Petyr’s first thought that there would be something to eat; any compound worth defending with spun razor wire was almost certain to have stores of edibles. For a long while he stared towards that break in the wood, watching the hinted remnants of the sun glint from spiraled coils. It didn’t appear to be a prison; the wire had been added later, after the fall of things. It was too sloppy, too new, to have existed for many years, but there was no telling whether it was in active use. Not without getting closer.

Therein existed the problem.

Petyr’s steps were slow, encumbered, weighed down by simple existence, his pack long emptied of rations and supplies. Slung across his back was a rifle to which he had two bullets. Only two. They would have neither the benefit of instinct or reflexes, nor the forethought of careful planning and execution. They were two bodies, nearly finished, wandering aimlessly through the wood. They had nothing to offer, nothing for which to trade, nothing which would make them an asset to any group or compound. They were haggard, run ragged, barely clinging to life, and perhaps that was their only hope: that someone might take pity on them.

For what seemed like an eternity Petyr stood there, silent in thought, looking through the forest. There was a chill pricking at his fingers, but all he could think of was the necessity of sustenance, and that without it, Sansa and he were likely to perish within days, perhaps hours given the potential for an onslaught of unruly weather. What then did they truly have to lose? Where normally Petyr would have passed the compound by, given it a wide berth, he now surrendered to his own mortality, to the ultimate need for life, the most basic and fundamental human instinct to live, and made an uncharacteristically reckless decision. Downward his head tilted, looking to his worn and wearied companion. “Okay.”

There was little to explain, no plan of action to enact, no briefing of Petyr’s master caper. He simply found the path leading towards the compound, a gravelly stretch of road that had been recently patched over with a crude amalgamation of tar and sand. This told Petyr that they had working vehicles, further inciting his need to infiltrate. His reasoning for approaching the place so directly was simple: were they to be spotted skulking about they would be seen as sneaky, rodent-like creatures who could not be trusted. A direct presentation allowed them to be spotted from a distance and appropriately appraised for the worthless whelps that they were. If they were to be gunned down at a distance, they would suffer little and be done away with quickly. A missed shot to the calf or shoulder through the density of the forest would ensure only a prolonged death. As such, when Petyr reached the road and stepped onto it, his first action was to unshoulder his rifle. After a moment of hesitation and total resolve, it slid down his arm, and with a metallic thud he dropped it to the ground, leaving it behind. The same motions were repeated with his pack, until he stood carrying only the clothes he wore and nothing more. With a look, he silently bid Sansa to do the same.

Those first steps towards the encampment were the hardest. A surge of fear-wrought adrenaline coursed through his body, awakening it, urging him to take flight, every fiber of his being screaming at him to flee. He did not. The closer he stepped, the more it became obvious that the compound was, indeed, manned. There were tiny columns of white, vaporous smoke curling into the air further inside, and the faint sounds of life milling about: a hammer’s thudding, what he thought to be some sort of motor flaring to life, the sound of a heavy, metal door opening and closing again. And then the sharp, distinct, aggressive demand shouted down the road, commanding Petyr and Sansa both to stop right where they were.

To a well-nourished, more wily mind his lack of maneuvering would appear sage. Yet in Sansa’s wearied and worn view she could see only a change — abandonment of caution, stark revelation, all risk assumed — from their customary conduct, a deviation which sparked the loudest whisper of panic her hunger-stricken body could muster. Baelish always went first, alert, wary, before motioning her forward into safety; now they had gone without a reliable food source long enough that neither man nor girl stood capable of protecting the other. Were she to know, or guess, at his ruminations on merciful death then her first reaction might not be fear, but incredulity: how possibly could a being so exhausted by simple existence possibly hope to end the life of another? 

Behind him Sansa shuffled, a depleted pack slung over one shoulder and her blanket — that same woolen expanse used to warm them both in an abandoned car long ago — clutched beneath non-existent breasts. Recently she had taken to shivering, even at midday; the blanket, and keeping both limbs wrapped tightly around her ribs, helped reduce the shudders. If not for that she would reach out and take Petyr’s hand. Whatever seed of intimacy had been sown during their brief time in an abandoned hamlet found itself buried in parched soil, but her memories of that evening transformed Sansa’s companion into an edifice of comfort. Like the blanket brushing and tangling amongst dried undergrowth his touch had risen to near-mystical qualities, thoughts of its possibility leading her throat to tingle and burn with want.

But they were hungry. Weak. Rageful. They hadn’t touched, even incidentally, for days. Lack of contact from one otherwise so close gnawed at Sansa as viciously as the pangs of starvation  in her belly. 

Just along the road’s edge she watched as all his earthly possessions, ragged and dust-choked they might be, clattered to the ground. Even Baelish’s rifle joined their pile; closing her eyes she could see its muzzle, flat and challenging like a cyclops emerged from some dank cave. That frightened her most of all. Possessing a gun elevated one closer toward divinity, functioning ammunition even more so; the mere sight of a steely barrel, that safety catch discretely clicked back, could intimidate unfortunate interlopers into granting them a wide berth. Now, accompanying two wretched beasts stumbling along a makeshift trail, it only marked them as a potential threat. Whoever skulked behind that metal enclosure held every advantage, leaving Sansa and Petyr to simply hope they indulged benevolence above all else. 

She did as he bid. Her pack the girl discarded easily enough; with greater regret, her blanket fluttered down. Yet unlike Baelish no one from tower or guardhouse could see that Sansa carried a pistol at her back. If they were cruel or vicious she had the benefit of surprise…she could stop it…save them… Mere thought caused a right hand to tremble enough so that Sansa clutched it in her left to make the quivering stop. There would be no heroic rescue, by her, today. Slowly, she eased the weapon from beneath ragged shirttails, extending it far out beside her before letting it fall away with a discouraging clatter. Nothing remained except to fix her eyes on Petyr, a mere step and a half ahead on the path, forcing one foot ahead of the other so long as his shoulders bobbed with the distinct motion of one walking. It was their halt, rather than the voice, which stilled her feet. 

Not long after barked commands the gate ahead cracked open, enough for a single figure to slip through and begin jogging towards them. As it drew closer they would see he was well-armed, a holstered gun at his hip, a rifle angled at the ready across his chest. The man stopped several yards ahead of them, leveling his weapon with the kind of confident ease that came just before a shot’s report. “Who are you?” It came out as more a statement than a question. “How did you find this place?” When Sansa opened her mouth only garbled, croaking sound came out. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper drink; as close to death as she was, the girl still felt embarrassment. To look and smell like this, to appear so irrevocably helpless, more so than even when Baelish found her pilfering berries. 

“Christ.” So the scout agreed — they looked like death. Unclipping a walkie-talkie — the cheap, plastic kind you bought children to play with in suburban yards — he began muttering quickly to whomever listened at the other end. A few moments later the gate opened again, wider. Several others walked in a cluster towards them. Yet even as their footsteps grew louder, steps distinguishing themselves from a generalized crunching of gravel, the shadowy mass of bodies remained blurry, indistinct. Sansa’s head swam. As the forest around them melted into a brownish swirl she managed to whisper, “Water,” before the world turned sideways. In the flurry that happened afterwards Sansa tried to tell them, Don’t hurt him, please, though it might have stayed a wish inside her mind. 

* * * 

Blackness turned to gold, to pink, then finally to a soft whiteness against her lids. When Sansa awoke the light filtering in through the window above suggested morning, meaning she had slept at least a day since their discovery of the compound. Makeshift curtains made from moth-eaten sheets and towels surrounded three-quarters of her bed, suspended from ropes. A hospital. Or what passed for one now, with tightly-packed dirt floors, scrubbed walls, and four metal-framed beds in one large open room with doors at either end. She coughed, lifted an arm to scrub at her eyes but felt a tug, a sting, as her intravenous line protested. An IV. Where did they get an IV? Focusing on her arm Sansa could see it had been washed, along with the rest of her body. Cuts and scrapes had been cleaned, the worst of them wrapped in cloth bandages. 

Quiet as she was her rustling must have alerted someone, one door opening, electric light leaking out — an office or storage room perhaps, as very few supplies were scattered about the ward — for a woman to emerge. Older than her mother, grey hairs common atop a dirty blonde scalp, with warm brown eyes that recalled caramel toffee treats at Christmas. She looked kind. “Petyr?” Sansa hadn’t heard a scuffle in the brief moments before losing consciousness, but her fainting spell made all those memories suspect. “Alive,” her nurse answered, checking the cuts along pale arms. “And recovering nicely.” At Sansa’s stricken look, she continued. “From your time in the woods, nothing more. You put us all in quite a panic with that collapse.” Another cough. “How long?” She nodded at the room in general. “Three days. And a good thing you finally woke up; we can’t spare any more of these,” the woman said, meaning the bag of saline she now inspected, “but at least we can wean you onto proper food and drink now.” 

A few more checks were done: if Sansa could remember her name and count to ten, how fast her pulse beat and how healthy her heart sounded. To all of them she submitted quietly, yet when the woman clearly made to leave, satisfied, she reached out. The gesture was enough to give her pause. “Petyr, please.” The woman nodded. “I’ll have someone tell him you’re awake.”