{ innocence & experience }
Littlefinger.
No, her thoughts warned, you mustn’t ever call him that. His name is Petyr and he is to be your bridegroom a few hours hence. The arrangements had come in a blur, far less distinguishable than the precise, agonizing procession of moments which culminated in her prior engagement. A sennight before, paired malachite followed the sullen procession of maids out of her room, genial curve of lips intact. Only when lord and lady remained, unobserved and unheard, did Baelish deliver the council’s decree. You love my mother, she silently protested as he explained their new arrangements. I was to marry Willas!, her mind shrieked when he informed her they would depart for his newly bestowed holdings at Harrenhal shortly after the king’s own nuptials. Am I brought so low, capable of no better than a boy from the Fingers?, Sansa mourned, even as he promised that his own accounts would provide his betrothed with whatever the queen deemed unworthy of expense.
She clasped her hands before the long mirror paid for with Mockingbird gold, twisting the fingers he kissed in chivalrous farewell seven days ago. The creeping sense of invasion felt at the Hand’s tourney, and later in the queen’s solar, did not trouble their private meeting. Baelish treated his bride-to-be with the sharp amiability which made him so desirable a friend at court. It unsettled her, such a difference, though Sansa knew the feeling was utterly without warrant. Wood slamming against wood and the heavy rustle of silk heralded the clamorous arrival of her handmaids. Some earned their keep by the queen, still others might collect a stag or dragon from the Spider for the trouble of sharing her habits. Did any speak to the Master of Coin? Would one slip away in the flurry of preparations to tell him how his Tully bride fared?
With a grinding of teeth, Sansa swore not to weep. Tears would only delight Cersei, perhaps embarrass the man she would soon owe all unto. A lady would never endeavor to bring her husband shame, and a wolf would never satisfy its enemy so.
They had begun preparing with the sun hovering mere inches above the horizon, breakfast little more than half-eaten when she pushed it aside. It beat down, an unforgiving golden pummel, as her small train made its way without fanfare towards Visenya’s hill. Even in the shuttered shelter of her litter, seed pearls, crystals, and thread of silver caught determined rays to turn the girl into a Northern star, glimmering and misplaced. Oils of rose and violet dotted along porcelain skin blossomed in the warm space. At her side, a direwolf lay hidden in the folds of a maiden’s cloak. Sansa thought of many things during the laborious journey, all of them trivial: how her scalp burned where it had been brushed and pinned, the scratch of embroidery beneath her arms, and how her left slipper pinched at the toes for lack of wear. Absent were her fears of what was to follow, of pleasing the lord waiting patiently before the high septon.
It was done, she had been sold. Or worse yet, discarded, though certainly the apathy of Baelish would far exceed in kindness the disgust of Joffrey.
Whispers followed her along the steps of the sept, like the rasp of serpents’ tongues and scrape of claws, a thousand beasts pursuing her into inevitable shelter. Sansa’s palms began to sweat; under pretense of the heat, she begged of a handkerchief from a handmaiden, loathe to ruin so beautiful a gown with unsightly marks. At least I shall look pretty, she thought as hands reached about her throat to fasten the clasp of a cloak swiftly discarded. Its weight reminded her of a hangman’s noose. Laugh they may, yet I am my mother’s daughter, and my father’s as well. They will not have the pleasure of my fear. From the entrance Baelor’s Sept appeared a crypt within, anemic wisps of flame dotting the inky stillness. Shapes emerged as the doors groaned shut, pressing her inside. Margaery,alongside her grandmother, a faint smile on her lips. Cersei and her father, looking somber. A moderate crowd of courtiers, all clustered at the base of the altar’s steps, wearing expressions of patience or pity in equal measure.
A pinch at her arm pulled the girl from her reverie just as she thought to consider the figure beside the septon; Joffrey, leering and murmuring about his duty as king. Every word sounded as if it bubbled up from the bottom of Blackwater Rush, muted, indistinct. Only after he clutched her arm, starting to drag her forward, did Sansa realize he meant to hand her away. Hatred washed over her anew, difficult to quell as the aisle threatened to end, as his fingers threatened to bruise. The terror of her escort alone painted a look of relief across her features when the little wolf unthreaded their arms and lifted a voluminous hem of ivory and silver to ascend the steps to her fate.
His eyes, she noticed with a shock, had turned silvery in reflection of her gown, and Petyr even seemed to smile as Sansa took up her place at his side. She heard nothing but the unsteady rattle of her breath, the frantic, agonized pounding of her heart.
{ innocence & experience }
Were the girl still in the North there would be little truss; Gods of the forest required no such ceremony. A modest audience compared to that of any royal wedding, it was a teeming crowd when considering the array of bodies a godswood joining would host. There were no weirwood faces weeping red sap, nor the gentle comfort of a forest breeze. It was heat, and a low, collective murmur that did not cease even when the King escorted the disgraced Stark girl down the aisle. Disgraced, for how else would a creature of such high birth elsewise be allowed to wed Littlefinger?
You may now cloak the bride and bring her under your protection.
Heavy, it was, that cloak of woven green and silver samite, when the Lord Baelish moved to drape it over her proudly pulled feminine shoulders. Put in place of gray and white which was ushered away to a place only the Gods knew; somewhere secret, somewhere that no longer mattered. It was a mockingbird which perched in place of ferocious canine, seemingly diminutive and without any manner of power when compared to the Northern beast of her heritage. It stretched and rippled, a pooled fan licking at silvery hem. Petyr’s fingers smoothed down her shoulders. The air about the altar smelled of crumbled sage and hyssop; tiny columns of smoke spiraled upward towards the ceilings somewhere behind the presiding septon, who stood finely dressed in a silken robe of muted burgundy. Petyr took Sansa’s hand in his as bid. It was warm, surprisingly smooth and without callous. There was a hint of sweat to his palm, lesser than her own.
In the sight of the Seven, I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one, for eternity.
The ribbon, a silk of the finest white, like cloud, like snow, was a cool slither binding man and woman together from wrist to wrist. Its coil a symbolic joining, softer than the iron bars of a prison but no less restrictive to a girl who stood to marry a man who had spoken only a handful of words to her in all her life. A man who had claimed openly, to all who would listen, to have loved her mother. It was the Mother, too, who stood at one side, opposite the Maiden, both carved from the purest stone alabaster, with unseeing eyes that seemed to cruelly judge just as all the rest.
Look upon one another and say the words.
Lifeless eyes. A thousand facets of blue and ice surrounded by the loveliest tint of auburn lashes. Complimenting colors and hues that would, that could, dazzle and charm any man or woman who would dare look upon them. Dead. A soul suppressed by the simple weight of life. Petyr stared into her false gaze, that false smile nearly as practiced as his own. It was, of course, not these masquerading motions which had first caught the Lord’s eye, though arguably they attributed to keeping it. So young she was, so fractured, grief and fear and uncertainty concealed beneath the perfect porcelain visage of stoicism and courtesy. Weapons sharpened to fine points of precision, wielded by only the most skilled.
She was perfect. Haunted, and perfect.
A smile equally lacking in splendor mirrored back to her. Oh, Baelish was no love-struck fool. Sansa Stark would not be celebrated. Where Joffrey was distracted by the Tyrell girl, he was certainly still loathe to give up his play thing. And what a sweet, red, pale plaything she was. Baelish wondered – were there blossoming shades of plum, of violet, of sorrel hidden beneath the rucked folds of her beautiful dress? Bruises bursting beneath ungentle fingertips and gauntleted-fists? At the planes of her eyes he could see the faint blue smudges, of sleeplessness, of unrest, covered over by soft white powder, as though evidence of her fragility might somehow mar her beauty.
Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger, I am hers and she is mine from this day until the end of my days.
Perhaps the greatest insult the Lannisters might offer the Starks would be to have their legacy, their very cognomen, swallowed by the name Baelish. A great house done away with, the North ruined, to be replaced and headed by anyone the Lannisters so saw fit. A fact which had not escaped the Lord, a fact which had lingered at the forefront of his mind. The debt for acquiring his auburn prize was quite mutual. For what the Lioness had counted on was that Petyr Baelish would not act on any desire to reclaim a frozen wasteland so long as on his arm he had his bride.
With this kiss, I take you for my lady and my wife.
It was chaste, but not brief. There was a lingering press of his mouth, closed but soft, before the Lord Baelish pulled back to look upon the face of a woman now declared his in the eyes of the Gods and all else. In the light of the flickering sconces, she would be able to see the faintest glistening of sweat at his temples, just beside the patches of premature gray cutting through rich dark; perhaps it was the heavy fabric of his ornately-threaded doublet; perhaps the Lord himself suffered from nerves.
There was a rustling, an outpouring of murmurs and applause, a whirlwind of purchased congratulations of those seeking to curry favor, or of those to whom the Lord had properly convinced.
Lady Baelish. Lady Baelish. They called her Lady Baelish. They touched her arms and her hair, they stroked her more fully than the man who had pressed his lips to hers in dutiful ceremony. They said her gown was fetching. Somewhere, loud and scathing, a boy’s hateful cackle rang out over the dissonance.
Then it was wine and spice and meat. A raised dais meant for man and wife. A jolly minstrel to drown out the sound of her beating heart.
She knew the ceremonial motions by rote, having practiced them in childhood chambers many times. A Northern wedding never once occurred to her as possible, for the first-born daughter of Eddard Stark would surely enter into a match designed to join his lands with ones more distant. But to recite her vows in so grand a sept, with such paltry attendance? Sansa could hardly reconcile the insult with her relief at having so few present to witness her humiliation. And it was an insult, calculated and public, this match with a man known to have barely removed himself from a commoner’s lot. The line of House Stark would now not die, but find itself diluted, watered down by unknown history and dubious ancestry, rendered all but worthless in the eyes of highborns.
You may now cloak the bride and bring her under your protection.
Despite the stifling atmosphere, compounded by oppressive audience and a multitude of candles, Sansa’s frame wracked itself with a slight shudder as fingers unclasped the sigil of her father, discarding it for the songbird of her betrothed. Darting one glance across her shoulder, she hoped to catch sight of where some faceless servant spirited it away, only to find her vision blocked by a multitude of polished gems. Garnet, onyx, some blue-green stone unrecognizable to an uneducated eye, all glinting symbols of the wealth so stubbornly accumulated. His cloak felt heavier, immeasurably so. Perhaps, she thought, it had been embroidered with untold amounts of pearls and gems. How else could the burden of two bolts of silk feel so different? How stunning, how complimentary, his colors must have looked in comparison to the monochrome presentation of a Stark bride. Even with both eyes open, staring unseeing at the septon, she could picture the contrast of spring and autumn cut by emerald cloak and errant auburn curls.
In the sight of the Seven, I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one, for eternity.
The incense made her vision blur with tears, forcing Sansa to blink as though overwhelmed with the emotion of the moment. Fingers curled over his palm, a reflex born from doing as she was bid. That Petyr neither pinched nor dug at her flesh served as small comfort, any contrast with regal behavior considered heartening. Pale silk nearly melded with the ivory flesh of her hand, an albino snake whose viperous fangs would only bring harm after moons, after years. Sansa tried to remind herself of that, desperately, even as she dared reflect upon the gentleness of his touch. He loves your mother. He shall not bring you to harm. Assurances which rang near as hollow as the officiant’s words.
Look upon one another and say the words.
His smile shadowed lips and eyes, an expression Sansa forced herself to match. As the stare lingered – only a craven would look away now – she recognized his expression for the falsity it truly was. Only a mockingbird pin, enameled black to complement the ebony accents skirting his form, looked possessed of genuine cheer. Sansa saw now that his eyes were not grey at all, but rather a murky green threaded through with silver. Much like her bodice, in a way, an argentate contrast to the sumptuous cloth-of-gold doublet falling to his calves. A fine garment, far finer than one might deem necessary for marriage to a traitor’s get. Candlelight played within the gems of her bodice, reflected from lady to lord in endless sequence until the pair seemed to meet along the edges of a sunburst. To a bard it would seem poetic, beautiful, worthy of a song.
Sansa, just this once, found it sickeningly overwrought.
Where Petyr reconnoitered grief, emptiness in his bride’s eyes, she found only bland pleasure in his own. Perhaps his clothes were meant to demonstrate the elation lacking on his countenance. Rumor reigned her thoughts while he recited the sacred words, Sansa desperate to remember all she had heard of the man swearing himself to her before all the gods. Not the gods of Winterfell. Wealthy. Genial. Ambitious. Whore-monger. None ever accused him of cruelty, though praise of charity or kindness could not be levied at him either. So long as he considered the match punishment enough, did not think to supplement it with the king’s particular notions of affection, then she might endure.
Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger, I am his and he is mine from this day until the end of my days.
It was done. She belonged to him, flesh and soul and claim, indivisible by any force. All that remained…Tully blue drifted downward, raking over the chestnut bristle above his lips, along his chin. In all her imaginings, Sansa never gave her husband a beard. It must scratch terribly, the girl thought. Then it was a glance to the septon, awaiting the pronouncement of their union as a condemned man looked to his executioner.
With this kiss, I take you for my lady and my wife.
His lips were warm. With lifted chin she accepted the embrace, neither giving nor taking of affection. Petyr’s hair hardly tickled, though she wondered if he did not draw out the kiss overlong. Pulling away, Sansa startled herself by thinking him handsome. A stranger, yes, and nothing like the gallant Loras or his gentle brother, but comely where many others were not. Septa Mordane’s adage returned to her; she would not love him there, before the altar, nor would she at the feast or in their bed tonight. Perhaps in time, however, it would not feel so strange. If only Sansa knew where to begin.
Optimism vanished at the branding of Lady Baelish. Oh, how they must have all delighted in that address. Queen Cersei kept the name of her father, despite marrying a far more prestigious bridegroom than her little ward. Another moment, another slight. Petyr at last earned his lady wife’s gratitude when they processed away from the paltry crowd, returning to the Keep for what one might deem a feast only in the abstract.
Merriment settled thinly over the gathered few, coaxed forth by generous helpings of wine. Sansa had but a cup, forcing bites of rich food between the tentative sips of Arbor gold; reds reminded her of the Blackwater, those horrific death cries, and turned to ash on her tongue. When musicians joined with the singer she reached for Petyr almost naturally, knowing expectations well. He danced aptly, though to accuse him of lacking joy stood hypocritical. Thinking of no suitable conversation, hardly knowing what he found stimulating in any respect, Sansa held her tongue. When they separated, other partners stepping forward, she smiled with the same warm nothingness from Baelor’s Sept.
The king’s great-uncle danced with her, though his grandfather made no similar offer; so too did Margaery’s brother, a handful of knights traveling with the Tyrell contingent, then even Prince Tommen demanded a turn. For a few, brief moments the illusion of happiness comforted her, until the bruising pinch of Joffrey’s pointer and thumb demanded Sansa return to grim reality. “You know what everyone calls him, of course,” the boy sneered, pulling her into a waltz. “I wonder, will you even feel Littlefinger when he climbs on top of you? I somehow doubt it.” Putting on a look of utter pity, the king moved them both towards the fringes of the floor. “What a shame, though if he gets a child off you there’s little difference in the matter. It’s all your kind are good for, after all.” Joffrey contemplated his dancing partner, taking in her frightened stare and stiffened muscles, then settling for a leering stare along her bodice. “We can make you feel something tonight, at least,” he murmured before crying out to the room: “The bedding! Enough of all this delay, to bed with the both of them!”
His iron grip on waist and arm promised how long a journey she would suffer, from feasting hall to marriage bed. In the crowd, Sansa caught no glimpse of Petyr.
{ innocence & experience }
Petyr saw the subtle smirks, the ripples of self-satisfaction from the Lioness and her son when Stark was replaced by Baelish. Undoubtedly it had been a request, nay, demand, by the golden Queen herself, spread amid the guests with oiled tongues and deft hands. They wanted Sansa erased, swallowed by the head of the beast, crushed to the earth beneath a Mockingbird boot. There was no reason for them to think he would otherwise defy them. Not after such a boon had been granted. And who better than to give the little whelp to? To them, Baelish danced on Lannister puppet strings, always an ally, always willing to bend subservient.
They were all spoken to, of course. If not at length then at least so much as to be considered amply acknowledged. No such care or attention was given to the newly-made wife who preferred the company of her own sorrow to that of anyone feeding her false smiles or empathetic images of posterity. No one was under any illusion that Sansa Stark was eager to marry the Lord Baelish – least of all the Lord himself. And so matters of greater import were tended to; a sullen wife would remain so until the shroud of her own self-pity was lifted, but the game would not be paused by paltry matters of a wedding.
Perhaps it was why he let her alone for such a great majority of the feast, taking hold of her hand only when expected to engage her in dance. Even then, the way he danced with her, with his wife, seemed somehow a deal different than the way he took others to the floor. There was no jollity, no laughter, no gleam of sweat upon his brow or flush to his face from his exertions, no whispered words spilt upon the shell of her ear. All of this she witnessed with others, more than she might have counted. With the Queen Regent he spent a great deal of time, leaning near to her to speak closely beneath the noises all feasts are well known for. The thumping of foodware, the clanking of cups, the swirling skirts of servings girls sweeping away plates of finished food only to usher in filled replacements. Cersei looked at Sansa as though she pitied her. That cold, detached look, the barest lift of one already-arched brow, her expression perpetually amused by something she found secretly funny.
Except it wasn’t.
Would she hate him for it? The pandering, the obviousness of it all. No one could claim the Lord Baelish did not serve his guests as he worked the room, keeping every tongue well-plied with costly wines, every belly filled with sumptuous meats, every mind flattered with silver-tongued compliment. Everyone save the woman he had pledged to have. Littlefinger was no friend of hers, a fact made blatantly obvious with each passing moment. He had claimed, once, to be a friend to her mother. How could it be so? No friend of her mother would gaily traipse about with those who had condemned her family so gravely.
And what would Catelyn Stark think, were she to know of her eldest daughter being bargained away to the small boy from the Fingers she had once known so long ago? Oh, there would be no pleasure had at all, no happiness, no hope. A vile match struck by a vile man, a traitorous man, whose well-placed lies had torn the realm asunder. Would that she had never listened to a mockingbird’s song about the origins of an assassin’s dagger…
I admire your persistence, spoke Tyrion Lannister, to a quietly smiling Baelish. A less diligent man might have stopped with the mother. Not that one as clever as the Imp would ever confuse persistence with ambition; the insult was fielded with oozing geniality, barbed tongue tucked away in so great a crowd. It was there, beside the half-man that his gaze, for perhaps the first time since leaving her to the attention of others, sought her out, found her, watched her spun in dance by a cruel boy king. Lovat lingered on the pair, eyes not daring to narrow but focusing with intensity all the same. No doubt the boy was interested in seeing every bruise, every welt left behind on ivory skin, placed there by his proxies. The king called for a bedding. Rustled murmurs spread across the hall, shouted hoots of anticipation, and a clapping of hands. The minstrels blew their horns and bashed their tambourines, their verses turning lewd: stanzas filled with the lifting of skirts, the shrieking cries of pleasure echoing from the tallest towers, and allusions towards plucking ripe maidenly fruits, juices bursting on the tongue.
Baelish shouted something daring above the din of clamoring fools, his wine cup raised high, a slosh of liquid spilling over the edge as feminine hands began to rake and pull at his doublet clasps. The man, at least, was in good humor, if the wild grin on his face were enough to tell a tale. All at once it was a flurry, a heaving mass of bodies which seemed far too many for such a modest ceremony. The man who was now her husband was whisked away, pulled out of the hall under the rabid attentions of eager females seeking to divest the Lord of his modesty. Yet the crowd paled in comparison to that attending the newly-made bride. It was Sansa to whom avaricious gazes were turned. And more than their gazes. There were vulgar comments, whispered and bellowed both, to accompany the grope of a hand along her breast, her waist, her bottom. Hands and fingers pulled at her silken sashes, her bodice, the layers of her skirts. All the while she was being swiftly ushered towards Baelish’s kept chambers nestled deep within the halls of the Red Keep.
For all his noble efforts to entertain a lonely bride, Petyr may not have even served as Sansa’s groom. Lifted upon the shoulders of strangers, groped and prodded, chased through the keep by a boy’s high, cruel laugh, the Stark girl might have still been pledged to Joffrey. Not once did she hope for rescue, a resignation more dire than any gesture of submission to the swelling crowd of lords and knights hellbent on seeing their quarry stripped and readied. Fear coursed through every vessel, polluting ribald jests on the curve of her bosom or dip of maidenly waist into villainous assaults. Some men behaved only as expected, guiding her trembling steps as they tore away a bride’s gown layer by agonizing layer, every vulgarity hiding some flattery within its core.
Yet Sansa had descended into a hot pit of snakes, vipers and adders and cobras, slithering over skin, between satin and silk, coiling ever tighter about their prey. At the center lurked His Grace, king of these fetid beasts so intent on humiliation. Lips pressed tight against a cry, limbs began to lose sensation as the sortie swept beneath an archway into the corridor, swerving towards the nearest stairwell. Duty kept the Lord Baelish well out of sight from his future betrothed, so much so that as cries of “To the bedchamber! To the brothels! Nay, to Littlefinger’s Lair!” rang through the halls dotted with torches, a muffled, detached part of the girl’s mind stood astonished they would remain within the castle walls.
Where else would he bed her? A whorehouse? How the Lannisters would delight in such a spectacle as that.
“Bring her down, bring her down!” Joffrey whined, pulling at her skirts so brutally a yard of brocade ripped free, spilling precious beads and gems across the cobblestones. A thousand thousand glittering insects, scurrying into every empty crevice and mouse hole to be dug out by avaricious servants upon the morrow. Hardly the boon royal nuptials would prove, still the joining of Stark and Baelish seemed to benefit all but the rosy-cheeked maid clinging to inebriated bearers: a second grand claim for the Lord, a nuisance shuffled aside, an excuse for merriment and carousing of the licentious sort.
Oh, how Sansa once dreamed of these moments! Nervousness crowding her belly, bursting through a door unto a husband awaiting her with fuzzy smile. There would be a few sly jests on impending consummation, one or two exaggerated gropes to sate the onlookers before they were ushered away and, in privacy, tenderness carried the newlyweds into the dawn. There was no tenderness here. As the throng rounded a landing, their shouts growing louder, more vulgar, Sansa knew they drew close. Joffrey continued to screech at the center of the scrum, until at last slippered soles met the ground with a jarring clatter. “Finally,” the boy king hissed, “These louts can’t follow even the simplest commands from their lord. But you can, can’t you Sansa? I wonder what Littlefinger shall make you do…Rumor has it his whores earn good coin to perform any manner of service. Only a true deviant could own women like them.” Striding backwards as he spoke, Joffrey kept picking at the now-tattered gown to better reveal the ivory shift and corseting beneath. Though warmth filled every corridor, Sansa shivered.
“Do you even know how many ways a man can take a woman, Sansa? Likely not, Mother says you Northerners rut like dogs. He’ll want to try every single one, no doubt, then maybe I’ll come and take you myself. Before you’re too spoilt to bed a king.” At that his fingers found a breast and pinched, bruisingly, twisting until she nearly cried out from the pain. Preoccupied, Sansa stood unable to witness the disapproving glower painting Tywin Lannister’s features on the party’s fringe. All at once the vague, crawling fear of a bedding condensed into terror that, against all odds, her tormentor spoke true on the man now bound to her with holy vow. Baelish did earn his wealth from the peddling of flesh: could he surpass simple professional accommodation, to assume the rancid tastes of his customers?
With a triumphant cry the roiling crowd of knights and lords stopped short before a nondescript door; it might have been Sansa’s chambers they stood outside, though the girl was utterly incapable to even imagine it so. Still facing his quarry and captive audience, Joffrey sent the unlatched door crashing back on its hinges with one kick. Despite utter futility in such a gesture, though she knew it would only raise regal ire, she dug both heels into the floor as that mass pushed forward into an empty space. No no no! “Oh but she’s shy!” Hooking his fingers into the neck of Sansa’s shift, leaving a triad of angry red lines along her chest, the king dragged her forward. Momentum and resistance combined to rip the fine fabric nearly to her waist; spurred by terror to act at last, the young woman’s arms snapped around her ribs, gathering both the ruined garment and her modesty close.
Riverine eyes squeezed shut; she could feel the briny evidence of her fear pooling behind them. I will not allow him the satisfaction of my tears. He might take all but that. One of the other men implored that His Grace leave something for the bridegroom to remove, though he was swiftly jeered to silence. Joffrey’s smirk only deepened to avaricious sneer. Yet rather than shout out another threat, the boy leaned close, until humid breath condensed on one ear. Over the room fell a deadly hush, as though every witness understood a boundary lay crossed, but stood incapable of diverting calamity. A vise clamped onto her arm, one hand painfully latched there to prevent escape; Sansa chose modesty over comfort, hands clutching the ruined shift to her bosom as a mark began to blossom. “Shall I get you started, hm? You should thank me on bended knee for the privilege of feeling – ”
“Your Grace,” Lord Tywin drawled from beside the door, in tones so lacking amusement Sansa thought at last she might weep in joy. For all his other crimes, for all the hatred rooted in a young heart for the lion’s brood, if he would only make this end, then momentary reprieve might occur. Just as the Hand drew breath, doubtless for a speech well-rehearsed as revelers climbed up lofty stairs to a Mockingbird’s roost, another surge of noise washed over the room. Petyr, with his flock of twitttering hens, delivered unto the marriage chambers intact, if not heartily disheveled. Gazing about, Sansa witnessed an immediate unwinding of shoulders and necks, her lewd honor guard relieved to no longer view the deterioration of so lighthearted a tradition. Though red muscle pounded fiercely behind her ribs, lips drawn apart to pull in grateful breaths, expression of purest gratitude compensated for lacking ardor upon a husband’s arrival.
Joffrey, however, looked mutinous.
{ innocence & experience }
Petyr’s wayward journey stood far less dramatic an affair. Certainly a man on principle has less reason for modesty, less reason to care over unfamiliar hands groping and tearing away panels of fabric – costly as they may be. Women, too, though a far more enthusiastic lot by and large, did not have the strength, truly, to mar or wound as a man’s eager fist and claw did. And so it was when Petyr Baelish was thrust into his chambers, surrounded by a shrieking, giggling cloud of women equally as disheveled as their host – at least one stood unabashedly flushed and bare-breasted – that it seemed almost unfair, the opposing experiences between newly-made man and wife. There was little doubt that the Mockingbird had rather enjoyed his spiraling ascent up the stairs, if not simply for the experience than in meeting the challege of the spirited mares accompanying him. Indeed, any person afoot within the Red Keep might, by the moans and shrieks and saccadic clamoring, have imagined themselves to be passing not by a royal chamber but a tavern or brothel or any rowdy combination of the two. The Lord stood, shed entirely of his golden doublet, the silk-made tunic-of-silver beneath unlaced and ripped down his chest. Breeches, too, were unlaced, but remained mercifully upon narrow hips, a starting of dark hair over lower abdomen readily glimpsed.
It was a smile that was on the bridegroom’s face, and one decidedly less wicked than that of their seething King’s had been. Jovial, almost, though keen onlookers might note the distinct lack of light to be found in reflective gray-green, most especially when they landed upon the Baratheon boy scaled upon his bed, looming over his bride.
“My lords and ladies!” Baelish’s cry rose above what remained of the din. “You flatter me immeasurably with your attendance and well-wishes. Much as I might wish to partake in further revelry, there are, regrettably, far more pressing issues.” A somewhat sly flourish towards a cowering Sansa was enough to solicit some hearty ribald japes from the crowd, timely eruptions of laughter to swiftly follow.
“My king,” he started, a deferential smile towards the meddling prick who dared to rumple his furs, as he parted through the crowd towards the large bed. “I humbly offer to sate your ardor with any of the finest of whores to be found in the Seven Kingdoms. Compliments of the house, of course.” A few pips from the back asked, and were ignored, for the same allowance. “This Lady, however,” another gesture towards Sansa, this one close, closer, nearly enough for his fingers to skim over braided red silk, “— is mine.” With a face no-less perturbed, Joffrey wrenched his hand away from the Stark girl. A few, slightly nervous peals of laughter flitted through the room. Petyr smiled that same smile, that practiced, genial smile.
As though suddenly aware the entire crowd were waiting expectantly on him, Joffrey slithered off the bed, a dignified smoothing of his hand down the front of his ornately-covered chest. “Enjoy the wench,” he snapped. “No doubt a small Lord like yourself should find some pleasure in the King’s refuse.” Seemingly pleased with his jape, in successfully insulting both wedding parties with one turn of the tongue, Joffrey left the room. There would be no more raucous hooting and hollering after that, no perverse pleasure in waiting for the husband to have his first touch. The room simply emptied with a rather dismal shuffling of feet, and a few half-hearted comments insinuating towards tearing the girl asunder.
Petyr latched the doors.
"A poor showing that was,” he observed, speaking to the grabbiness of the men – one in particular – and not the audience’s size. Towards a table stocked well with wine the Lord moved, pouring himself a cup, and then another, presumably for Sansa, though he did not offer it to her. Only a small drink was sampled before the cup was set back aside. “Though certainly they have made the task far easier for me.” Back towards the bed he drifted, a vague smile on his face that seemed far from amused. “What has become of your pretty dress, my lady?” It sounded caustic, as though the act had been of equal insult to him.
The bed bowed where he took a seat on its edge beside her. A far less clever man than Baelish could have seen just what had transpired; what they had done to Sansa was far from festive. A hand extended to smooth up one of Sansa’s bare arms, pulling a tatter of her shift up over her shoulder. “I think I might have rather enjoyed taking it off for myself.” Too insinuating, he knew, for a girl who had only just been victimized for the hundredth time by the boy who was once to be her husband, who was once to make her a Queen. Now no longer a princess, nor a queen, nor even a Stark. A Baelish. A girl shunted away and sold off to whatever bidder the Lannisters could best control. The warmth of his hand lingered there, at her shoulder, the pad of his thumb drawing small circles on her skin.
Tilting his gaze he could see the red marks made in the wake of clawing fingernails left on her chest. The dark spots a bruising grip had imprinted on her arm. Over those dark spots his fingers drifted. Caressed. There would be others, he was sure, when he peeled away the last remaining layers of her clothing. A shift of his hand brought fingers beneath her chin, slowly turning her face to his. “You need not worry over them, anymore.” A kiss. His lips were soft, tinged with the fresh sampling of wine. He did not make to beggar entry into her mouth with his tongue. “I intend to keep you safe, Sansa.”
Sansa. It was an indescribably delicate way he said the syllables, the word, the name. Familiar, indeed, like a husband might speak to a wife, but also in a way a man might speak to his god, with an openness, a rawness, given only to absolute privacy and the assurance that no one would hear the words. Again he kissed her. This time his mouth lingered on hers, and his fingers slid from her chin to her throat, up, over her ear and partially into her hair.
Through the crowd, beyond her king’s looming form, Sansa could make out only slivers of the man to whom she now belonged. A pearly gleam from between his lips; glimmering tatters of wedding finery; errant strands of chestnut, mussed out of its combed arrangement by overeager wenches. Petyr cut the very image of the husband she had imagined, when a bedding felt wicked yet worthy of relish. Breathless, bawdy, undressed by fingers steady and knowledgeable rather than her own trembling touch. Now the girl could scarce feel her limbs, much less wield them to any effect; Joffrey’s touch sent ice-water floods through arteries dilated in terror, paralytic to every extremity.
Sensing that there remained some part to play in this farce of a union, she straightened out of her tormentor’s reach as Baelish spoke. Tully blue remained fixed on ornate swirls of thread within rumpled coverlets, hoping she might find within some hidden map tracing an escape from the Red Keep northward. The fabric only glinted innocently under a hundred flickering tapers. Sansa attempted a smile, self-deprecating and soft, though it manifested more in a grimace. At Petyr’s gesture, intimate because of grazing quality, her gaze darted up towards eyes flat and green as a snake’s.
Not a snake, a bird. Birds were kind, weren’t they? Weren’t they?
Joffrey wriggled from his perch, granting no true relief to red-headed quarry; she began looking from one ribald guest to another, attention flitting across the commentators until the tide of her honor guard first ebbed, then regressed back towards the corridor. Lucky, perhaps, that her groom wielded the power of whores with which to distract their king, though Sansa doubted he had any care for a woman beyond how much she could scream and bleed. Did the man standing a few paces distant, lips pulled taut with bland amusement, understand the probable outcome of his offer? Did he care, feel any responsibility towards those in his employ? Would he feel any towards her?
I am no refuse, Sansa thought with narrowed eyes when the room had cleared and Baelish turned to bolt out further interruption. Brief indignation guttered and died as he turned, speaking in the sort of intimate murmur which suggested more familiarity than she felt or aspired to. Inside her gut a creature, dense and slimy, twisted anxiously with every muffled step the lord took towards her bed. Their bed. Sansa would never sleep alone again. “My —— my apologies, Lord Baelish.” Terribly aware of exposed flesh and scattered injuries, she seemed to curl in upon herself, shoulders and back bowing as though she would contort into a ball if given the opportunity.
“There were so many, and then…His Grace…” Her mouth clamped shut before any treasons might tumble out. Sapphire drifted shut, not in pleasure, at a growing sensation of warmth along one arm. “ — His Grace knew not his own strength,” Sansa finished in quiet diplomacy. Wedded but not yet bedded, the Lord Baelish might find any fault, however minor, as excuse to cast aside his newly-pledged bride. Then the Lannisters would lay claim over her once more, assign to the little wolf a station not even the gods could imagine. Better, perhaps, to swallow fear and strive towards keeping this stranger content instead.
Incorporeal resolve, no matter how genuine, failed to still the tremors along her arms, her chest, her legs, as though Sansa’s body meant to jostle the interloper off. She had no reply for his insinuation, appropriate, very nearly decorous within the bounds of matrimony. A part of her, the same part battered and spat upon by Joffrey, yearned to lean into this man’s touch; accept his comfort and curl tight, sheltered against him until dawn chased them both awake. That was not how beddings passed. Petyr would climb between her legs and leave his bride bleeding, alone, to contemplate what changes had come to pass in so short a time. For years Sansa had performed her duty with grace and beauty, now wishing for respite, for sympathy, for a little gentleness amidst the capitol’s violent delights.
Petyr was lying, she told herself, willed herself to believe. Viridian stare failed to aid her efforts, deepening in an atmosphere devoid of spectators. He didn’t look predatory, tucking two fingers under her chin so that bride and groom might look upon one another properly for the first time since his entry. Nor did he feel predatory in that moment. Simply unknown, frightening enough to a girl with her past. Sansa’s eyes did not even close when his lips pressed to hers, so brief, so unanticipated was the kiss. “Your sentiments are kind, my lord.” What else could she say? I know? I believe you? I trust you? Surely Baelish was not fool enough to expect such blind faith as that.
He embraced her a second time and still her gaze remained wide. At first Sansa held still, emulating a statue within the palace gardens, cool and unyielding. Then Petyr’s hands slipped along her face, behind her neck, into her hair, restraining her. Faces floated before her: Joffrey, the Hound, Ser Ilyn; the girl could not see her husband at all, masked and shrouded by the expressions of other men. Terrifying men. Panic rose in her breast, bursting out of its cocooned hold, a macabre butterfly spreading dread winds to crush ribs and heart and lungs. All at once she jerked away, hands fisted in her lap, head tossing to dislodge fingers barely carded in auburn locks. Oaken bed frame groaned slightly in protest as Sansa edged sideways, aware only after she had prized herself away of the grave insult offered. Staring at Petyr for a moment in abject horror — he owned her now, able to mete out punishment and reward as freely as the king which preceded him — she wavered, then rose with shocking grace to find her feet and cross to where an untouched goblet stood upon the table.
“My…nerves…,” she excused after a deep swallow of Arbor gold. Thought not entirely untrue, the requisite jitters of a maid on her wedding night would serve as blessed alleviation of what beset Sansa in that moment. He would only view her in profile, ivory and flame under the light, bruises fading with dim illumination. “I —— I’m sorry.” Another sip, much shallower. “I only ask for a moment…”
{ innocence & experience }
█ * § anicelybandiedword:
Sansa wrenched free of his kiss. Wrenched, a girl caught in the throes of fear or disgust. It was no delicate tremble or shudder of apprehension. The Stark girl fled his touch, as though his hand had been the tight coil of a noose.
And not just a noose: the gallows, hangman, and crows as well.
There was a low tension perceptible by the fire of the hearth; undulating or clambering in its rise towards the unlatched window well across from the maidenbed – death from a chill. It was the lingering menace of all builders of dwelling spaces; was the cold that rose during the long winters, the cold that came up through a window to suck away the dwellers therein? Would it be enough, the distance, the window, when – winter came?
A thin smile graced the Lord’s features, watching Sansa cross the room and distract herself by wine, stammering out excuses of nerves, begging reprieve, for but a moment. Petyr said nothing, made no sound to accompany her dead leaf plea. He sat, amiable enough, where she’d left him, looking casually expectant but not to the point of unsavory insistence. For a long while he simply watched the girl now named his wife, her silhouette red and orange, lit by surrounding flame, and the gleam of polished candelabras, so silver they seemed to glow. She sipped, slowly, hardly the actions of a girl attempting to summon liquid courage, and more or less those of someone stalling for time. Petyr was a patient man, an understanding man. Sansa scarcely knew him, had been through quite an ordeal, and had every right to feel some level of anxiety. For such a reason he did not elect to stand and join her, less such an act be taken as intimidation or a ruthless coaxing towards that which she so obviously did not wish to engage in.
Petyr had no misgivings: he was far from the knight with blossoming blonde curls who had so caused her face to flush far redder than the bloom bestowed to her. There was, naturally, some level of hope towards enthusiasm from her, but very little in the realm of expectation. Not all maids were willing maids, but most would at least accede to doing their duty as a woman. As a wife. Yet when Sansa finished her cup of wine, and went to fetch a second, fencing about like a restive horse, Baelish realized that the onus of duty was not likely to sway her.
Annoyance besieged him.
Rising to a stand, his hands worked to usher away what remaining loops of cloth held his tunic in place, moving towards a large, ornately carved armoire. There was only the briefest glimpse of his naked back as he shrugged off the decorous fabric and replaced it with a dressing gown from within the storage. It was a rich gray color. Petyr seemed to go about refastening the laces to his breeches before belting the garment loosely about his waist. A second piece was fetched and draped over one arm.
“It has been a long day – for the both of us,” he said, not unkindly, making his way across the room towards her. “And I fear there is very little to be desired from an unwilling bedmate.” There it was, boldly declared: he bought not an ounce of her performance. Circling around behind her, Petyr slid the dressing gown – a man’s garment, and much too large for her, but a courtesy all the same that he was gracious to preserve her modesty – over her shoulders. It was the same gray color that he wore, seemingly plain, but upon closer inspection one could see the silver-colored threads patterning in intricate detail along every hem. The feel of the fabric was light, airy, very soft silk. A costly garment, to be sure. It exuded the faint scent of sweet powdered anise and orris – herbs meant to stave away moth and their larva.
For a moment, his hands lingered on her shoulders, and she could feel the warmth of him seeping through the silk. “You will come to me when you are ready.” At the back of her neck his fingers brushed for only a second, as his hand gathered her hair to place it over the dressing gown, holding it in place until she reached to grasp it herself.
“I do hope you would not protest too severely to sharing a bed.” Courteous enough he was not to touch her, but not enough to sleep on the settee. This was fully evidenced in the fact of him not bothering to wait for an answer before moving to the bed and pulling back the coverlets, readying them for slumber. “And…in the interest of tradition, I rather think it is best that all believe I wrested my rights; after all, a girl wedded and not bedded is hardly secure in her position. I am sure you understand.” If it bothered him that Sansa was not prepared to spread her legs and bleed for him, the Lord certainly did not show it, for all his genteel graces.
The wine tasted bitter, drying out her mouth more than the nerves which forced her to flee the marriage bed. It was nothing more than a prop to aid in her retreat, a courtesy of sorts to keep Lord Baelish from believing his person gave offense. In truth it might have been any man or beast which awaited her on that bed: still Sansa would recoil from the touches which would at last shatter any hope of sanctuary. She knew she ought apologize more sincerely, perhaps even beg his forgiveness; only the king and queen regent held more sway over her now, and a disgruntled husband could turn his wife’s days into hell if he so wished.
Such fears helped ease down the first helping of wine. Tension kept her shoulders in a rigid line, angled so that the groom’s gradually deteriorating patience went unseen. Admittedly, Sansa behaved with a terrible selfishness once the wedding party had departed. All her concern for Petyr’s comfort or feelings came only in the context of how a downturn might bring her to harm. Such was a mindset carefully cultivated and painfully acquired following months of isolation in the Red Keep. No longer could she perceive of her choices as individual, unconnected actions; instead Sansa saw plain the ripples expanding from every decision, rustling other players and then deflected back in an overlapping turbulence to shake her again. The first cup had been intended to gather enough nerves for consummation; with the second, however, Sansa hoped to find some solution to mistakes born of its predecessor.
Lord Baelish was not so terrible, she told herself. His state of undress betrayed a certain strength in his slight build and the man’s face was far from displeasing. More than once she had seen a spark of mischief in grey-green which dared intrigue her, though there were also moments his eyes turned silvery with frightful hunger. Patience and good graces stood at his command; not until the tension of her bedding had been eased did Sansa think such a feat possible. He could, perhaps, keep her safe…no. No! No vows spoken before a septon erased his sympathies with the Lannisters, nor did a single kindness between strangers make of him a loyal, loving husband. So starved of affection was Sansa that the mere absence of cruelty seemed near enough to inspire loyalty.
Movement drew Tully blue upwards. Just as quickly Sansa lowered her gaze back to the rippling wine, turned shy by so intimate, yet so normal a ritual. Her fingers busied themselves with the goblet’s metalwork, tracing and tapping whilst Baelish rearranged his clothing. Sansa did not look up again until he began moving towards her: was it a flash of grey silk that served as warning, or could the little wolf feel a change in the air as one body pressed forward towards another?
"My lord, I —— ” Do not start this marriage on more lies than you must. Petyr had just gifted her a rare privilege: the truth. Sansa did not want to bed him; certainly not tonight, and in the days to come…well, she hardly knew what the next half hour would bring, much less the coming fortnight. Lips of palest pink closed together. WIll he strike me? Will he tell the Queen? A woman could be set aside without question should she refuse her lord’s touch. Or, simpler still, she could be forced. “I understand a wife’s duty,” she whispered, as though this paltry knowledge might somehow excuse the quiet truculence.
Her refusal did not extend so far as to flee him a second time. The goblet set itself to the table with a soft tap, Sansa’s arms now free to find their sleeves with childlike complacency. How quaint. A husband dressing his wife before the marriage bed, rather than the opposite. Moving as though caught underwater the girl tucked one fold beneath the other, belting the robe with a loose knot. Was it meant to be hers? Plainly not, if the larger cut served as evidence. Still the Stark girl lived on by the charity of others, then: food, clothing, shelter, all of it. The unseemly burden of an unimportant lord.
Auburn locks replaced goblet of hammered silver for her talisman, stroked idly as Petyr continued his orbit of the room, now readying the bed for both their bodies. When you are ready, he intoned. And if I never am? Sansa knew that sentiment was impossible and so made a noncommittal noise of agreement in her throat. “I have no wish to embarrass you, nor do I make designs on a return to my…previous station.” Joffrey’s plaything, his whore if left unclaimed long enough. “It is your generosity I impose on, after all.” Proud that she did not tremble, Sansa crossed to the bed’s unoccupied side, pushing back the linens before climbing into its shelter. Petyr’s robe remained stubbornly knotted over the remains of her shift. Easing back into the confluence of furs and pillows, she promised, “I will tell them whatever you ask of me, my lord.”
