Yes, she DID look like an Alayne, but her surname was a little puzzling. Issues of genealogy weren’t important, not when it came to his sister. All that mattered to her was whether someone was intruding on her home or not.
❝ No. My sister…LUCILLE. She lives here as well. ❞
❝ All those deaths…because of her. ❞
It was in HASTE that he told her under no circumstances to linger long in the Great Room, which was both a parlor, a living room, and a library all at once. That was HER domain, and those who continued to trespass in it ran the risk of angering her. He didn’t know how long Alayne planned on staying there, but he supposed that telling her his sister’s usual HAUNTS would give her a better chance of staying alive.
Thomas didn’t know exactly why he was helping her, but it was partly because he was tired of seeing people die with him being POWERLESS to stop it. Once he was done he leaned back, sighing.
❝ I apologize. You must think me GLOOMY company. ❞
Terminology seemed somewhat misapplied — spirits haunted, lurked, lingered, yet never did they live within walls which sheltered those still mortal. Yet would one not cling to those peculiarities of living that, in death, became trivial? Sansa knew that she would, felt it in her very bones, a primal fear whispering on about the terrifying unknown. Perhaps it was no more frightening than being born. Perhaps it was freeing. Still, standing so near to ghostly form made youthful heart pump stronger, her pulse a tympanic beat promising over and over again: I live. I live. I live.
“Deaths?”
No matter how great the manor appeared, dozens of rooms sprawling out in rickety succession across frigid grounds, to have even one cast off limits imparted a sense of entrapment. Through their relocation Petyr had promised her peace, a quiet sanctuary in which to wait out leonine foes; malevolent spirits already crept within the shadows of her dreams, much less the very real, very threatening shadows of her rooms.
“You must not have many occasions to converse,” Sansa prompted. Proper tenants had not occupied Allerdale for many years, though the agent through Petyr acquired the property had warned of damage from tramps and other wanderers. With neither friend nor lover at one’s side, surely eternity stretched on in a kind of interminable hell. “Nor do I,” the girl admitted. “My father preferred that I not travel far from home and now…here…” A pale hand swept in indication of the empty room, the house all around it. “There may not be many more acquaintances to make, Sir Thomas.”
His former title no longer sounded RIGHT; it had been decades since he even used it. Or did he ever become the proper baronet? Most of his life was spent in the pursuit of a dream that never amounted to anything except for a rusted hulk of a machine. The very MONSTROSITY that now stood outside the hall and was being dismantled. It should have hurt to see his life’s work being stripped away from the land, but it didn’t. He had accepted that his harvester was nothing more but a failure, and his very heart had been burned from him a long time ago.
❝ SHE won’t let you stay here for long. No one hardly stays for more than a week. ❞
There was a soft sigh as he retracted his more solid form, but now his eyes were staring at the wall behind her. He had seen countless owners come and go, passing the house from one family member to another. NONE of them stayed, and those who did left as babbling messes. Lucille’s sadistic streak had only increased since she had died, and her protectiveness of both him and their home was worse. He just hoped that the girl’s aunt wasn’t planning on leaving her here as a way to get rid of her. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen something like that happen. Children killing parents, jealous aunts killing nieces…except this time, Lysa Arryn might be banking on the reports of MALEVOLENT spirits to do the killing for her.
Frankly, Thomas was tired of the endless cycle of life and death. He just wanted to rest and leave the world behind. Death now seemed more like hell than heaven, mainly because he was in neither.
❝ Forgive my hastiness. Who are you, my Lady? I should at least know the current lady of the house. ❞
Sharpe. In memory’s recesses she could recall such a name — the former occupants, not in recent days but long ago, when inheritance passed from generation to generation rather than finding itself constantly shuffled about on the auctioneer’s block. How many years since one of their blood walked these halls? Ten? Fifty? One hundred? Though logic dictated still that this must comprise some prank, it was not in Petyr’s nature to be so playful, nor would any from the village distant bother with such trifles.
He was — so much as any ghost could be — real.
“She? I’m afraid I do not understand.” The man introduced as her father held title to this house and its surrounding lands, as well as several smaller parsonages nearby; no one could dare challenge Baelish’s claim, not any of flesh and blood. A bitter skeptic only moments before, Sansa now wondered if there might not be more spirits lurking amongst the tatty draperies and rotted boards. Give it to the Freys, she had told him. Let them suffer a curse. Rumor could not dissuade him however, and, no other recourse left to her, Sansa trailed after in meek silence. Silence which continued, queries of a name tying knots in her tongue. They expected few visitors and fewer questions, but with lies carefully agreed upon nonetheless.
“Alayne. Alayne Stone.” Did spirits know when the living lied? Blue eyes averted themselves as superstitious precaution. “Are you the only one? The— the only…?” Ghost.
Thomas saw no reason to LIE, though his brow furrowed at the sight of red drops of red form on her fingers. Drawing just enough of his energy, he managed to flick a clean cloth in her direction; the white square fluttering near her leg to rest on the mattress. He stayed where he was so that he didn’t ALARM her further, moving only to clasp his hands behind his back.
He knew very little of the family that now owned his home. The older woman – her mother? an aunt? – with the SHRILL voice and young son who still fed from her breast was an unpleasant one. He had heard more than one of her maids grumble about how DIFFICULT she was, and from what he had seen over the years, that was an understatement. Now, there was this new one and that male companion of hers.
It wasn’t his style to bother with the dealings of humans, and he didn’t ask her about him. Instead, he sat down on the chair so that he wouldn’t TOWER over her. His gaze rested briefly on the winter rose in her hand, before finally settling on her face. Now that he could see her better, there were distinct similarities between her and the woman. Lysa Arryn. Possibly an aunt, for they only shared the same nose.
❝ I believe I frightened you earlier. It was not my intent, my Lady. ❞
Fluttering handkerchief frightened more than the mysteriously bequeathed roses; so long as the apparition before her caused no more disturbances, then Sansa might explain its — his — actions as the hallucinations of an exhausted mind. Yet pale as moth’s wings did silken fabric drift, caught up from where it lay upon the mattress and exchanged for her treacherous bloom. She pressed it to injured palm without once looking away from ghostly apparition, taking in the aged clothes, the carefully indulged decorum, the weeping red wound beneath one eye.
His own hand could not possibly have inflicted such grievous injury; was it in poor taste to inquire how it had come about? Rumors swelled around the house and its grounds, though such whispers were always better heard than believed. Any ancient estate surely witnessed its share of deaths throughout the centuries, though murder leant a different sort of color to its dark and moldering halls. Petyr made no mention of such a past, surely an omission more deliberate than not; already poor dreams plagued her sleep, a condition he would not wish to exacerbate.
Only once the spirit sat — or mimicked sitting — did Sansa look away, blotting at minuscule red specks until a faint ache, nothing more, remained of her clumsy fright. She found his eyes again, but could not tell their color. Indeed, most shocking of all were trailing wisps of long-dried blood, crimson banners which drifted in a current which failed to reach her own warm flesh. So many questions filled her throat, choking her, yet only one — the safest — managed to break free.
“You have done no harm,” she promised, uncertain if it was truth or platitude that rolled from her tongue. “Please…what is it you should like to be called?”
It wasn’t a matter of whether she FEARED him or not. Frightening a young woman was not his intent, but his sister’s. But Lucille had long retreated into the bowels of the house, snapping only when someone interrupted her personal space and privacy. A few incidents HAD happened where workers were chased off by a screeching spectre, but lately the new owners of Allerdale Hall seemed to be there only a few days each year.
Now, however, it seemed that they were staying longer, which meant that the chances of them waking Lucille were higher. There was only so much that he could do to keep her from harming others, but he seemed to have done an effective job of frightening the girl on his own. It just so happened that the room she was in was his OLD room, which was why he was often there, unseen. But then she’d called out into the darkness, and from the way she spoke, it seemed like he was talking to him.
❝ You should not be, my lady. ❞
His tone came from the shadows in the far corner, and he slowly materialized, stepping into the moonlight. Thomas knew that he looked terrible, with his pale pallor and sunken eyes. Not something anyone should see in the dead of the night. He turned his gaze from her then, though his finger gestured to the flower she held between her fingers. So she’d seen it.
❝ Not of me, at least. ❞
Bran believed in ghost stories; not his elder sister, who ever preferred lace-edged tales of princess and midnight kisses, the glittering balls that always ended in happily ever after. Yet here in Allendale she had no brother, no fairy tale dreams, no memory of bedtime stories shared by a mother who also sometimes longed for the warm evenings and muffled laughter of her youth. Here Sansa must exercise the utmost caution; indeed, Baelish had at last claimed his gifted parcel in no small part thanks to its isolation. Though such insulating distance hindered certain business ventures of his, it guaranteed that she might stay out of sight, tended to only by Petyr and a small cadre of trusted staff who would stay on beyond unpacking.
He had graciously given her the finest room, an honor greeted with more dubiety when Sansa took in pitted floorboards, peeling wallpaper, and grime-coated windows which faced away from the long front drive. Rugs would cover ancient wood planks, furniture and hangings shipped specially from London a brightening influence as well once they arrived, yet even then she doubted the room would ever be rid of its…otherness. And now the rose, cradled lightly in her palm as though made of smoke, seemed to warn that this room, this house, would never fully belong to man or girl.
“Gah— !”
Breaking off a cry, she fumbled with the thorn-studded stem; for a moment it wobbled precariously, before Sansa clutched ghostly offering with a desperate grip. Fleeting pain stung along her hand, crimson dots welling where verdant barbs met flesh. Impossible. The long journey, the isolation, the moldering sense of abandonment which sank into her bones alongside a damp chill…these things had made her hear a voice which could not speak, see a man who could not exist.
Until he spoke again. “And— and was it you, then? Who left this? Or…someone else?”
He was no longer a person; nothing more but a wisp in the BLACK history of Allerdale Hall. Thomas had no idea how she had come to possess his home, but he wondered if she was aware of the unfortunate circumstances in its bloody history. He’d only peeked into her room to see who now owned the home, but seemed to have frightened her as a result.
It wasn’t his intention, and he’d drawn just enough energy to place a red rose on her side table, as his way of an apology.
She hated it here at Allerdale. Aunt Lysa’s estate, for all the frigidity of its mistress, possessed the high, vaulted ceilings and airy sophistication Sansa associated with the embarrassingly wealthy. While the now-widowed Baelish had exorbitant funds of his own, the gift given for loyal service to his sovereign quite clearly demanded its ample use — and soon. Soil like blood leaked through the floors, sky served in place of a glass dome to greet those in the massive front hall; overhead, moths wheeled in flocks through air thick with must.
Nothing beautiful seemed to exist between its crumbling walls — except one crimson rose.
Petyr swore it was not of his doing, though she could see a faint shimmer in celadon that suggested he might try next time. He suggested it was left behind by those who came before — impossible, as the house had stood vacant for months, unsuitable even for drifters. And that face, at her window… Sansa returned to her room, circling about the aged boards with the blossom caught up between slim fingers. “I’m not afraid,” she said softly, as if to convince herself. “I’m not afraid of you.” Repeated louder, to a maddeningly empty room. After all, what monster left behind red roses?
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.
