卍
February 1941
Krakow, Poland
The corridors were stagnant, the essence of life barely existing in the stillness that aggregated within the confines of the administrative office. Husks of men donning Nazi uniforms, of pale gray and pale green, were neatly situated behind desks, their fingers numbly and mechanically striking against typewriter keys. The murmur of voices droned like a mechanism yearning to retire. Whatever life there was, it was exhausted from the countless hours, time shifting from one day to the next, from morning to night, all methodical it seemingly was since the peculiar occupation of Poland. Life, time, they were strangled in the reins, in the merciless grasp of the Nazi war machine, of the expansion in which the Führer of Nazi Germany desired for his people, and the world had not noticed, or if it had, it was blind, and by choice. The sense of isolation for Poland, for her people, it was overwhelming; it ravished the souls of all who claimed to be of that blood until there was nothing more than a desolate sensation of despair, of fear, of being expendable.
This day, after three weeks of constantly visiting the same administrative office from Monday through until Friday, from the hour of eight in the morning until the hour four in the afternoon, finally, the girl swathed in red wool, her question was answered. It was grim, that brief exchange between the red girl and the German man, as he gravely studied her, his face remarkably expressionless.
Outside, the crisp, still-frozen morning air of spring swirled amid ribbons of light, the pure sunshine that parted from between the clouds aimlessly churning forms within the sky. There, quiet Polish feet shuffled aside, owners mindful of not meeting the gaze of any soldier, though some halted, dared to observe the regiment of Waffen SS marching. Boots chimed in harmony, voices belted.
“…Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein,
und das heißt: Erika
Heiß von hunderttausend kleinen Bienelein,
wird umschwärmt: Erika
Denn ihr Herz ist voller Süßigkeit,
zarter Duft entströmt dem Blütenkleid
Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein,
und das heißt: Erika…” [ x ]
To the north men marched, and to south men continued to pour forth in perfect formation. Seemingly unending they were, faces of men so smooth and youthful it was enough to make anyone wonder if it was by choice in which they joined the military, or if it was by conscript. Their marching now, was for a purpose. Not merely something to marvel at: the aching efficiently, of their singular successes. Over the past week, hundreds of soldiers had arrived in Krakow, and hundreds more were yet to come. The air buzzed with electricity. A low hum exacerbated by the thumping in time of hundreds of pairs of black, army-issued German boots.
He stood among them. No, not among them. Beyond them. He neither directed, nor observed, merely, basked in the rigid ambiance that the fallacious drum-roll those boot-falls presented. Curled within a glove-imprisoned hand were pages and pages of names, housing assignments, dates, checklists. Like royalty. A monarchy despised. Standing there in dark wool, uniform of black sable, pristine and without flaw. Wrapped precisely about his left arm was not the garish crimson and black emblem, but instead the dusky grey eagle-and-swastika patch. Two rune bolts emblazoned a rank tab: Schutzstaffel. A flutter of wind swished the flaps of his coat, as the door to the administration office was pulled open.
“Nein.” The simple refusal and insistence all at once: there had been no mistake. It was queer, that isolated sense of ignorance and self-righteousness that the administrative clerk upheld to his own character, his own nature. Although the girl in red managed to counter each point he curtly stated with one of reason and good measure, the clerk regarded the petulant red bird without an ounce of forbearance. He had explained to her, that there was no possible way a mistake had been made: there was no record of any Eddard Stark being arrested. It said so, right in his logbook. He had no interest in hearing her proof of otherwise. Clearly, the man had neither the wit nor patience to parley with a girl who had somehow decided she was not just his equal in the prowess of mentality, but that of the human species as a whole – and it infuriated him. For her to intimate that he could be inexact about anything, let alone his work, would be a folly. He knew it as well as she did. The man, in his square-jawed visage, would not budge. An ugly wrinkle of disdain marred his forehead while his nostrils flared, and with a snort of contempt, not only had the clerk taken a clear physical identity of the girl, memorizing the beauty within his mind, but he flattened his palm harshly on the desk in a declaration that she was being ‘a contemptuously impertinent young lady who required discipline that he could easily provide’.
Silence thickened between them, accompanied by an unbearable tension that was not only electrical, but palpable to all that witnessed the conversation between the wiry clerk and the girl.
A finger jabbed at the logbook, one last time, of the date in question, showing a vacuous nothing, a thousand names, but none belonging to the one she sought. “You are mistaken.” Detached he was of emotion, at least his voice, and he thrust the paltry records she’d brought as hopeful proof back towards the girl with a particular harshness to excuse himself. Two steps away, they had parted, but as the girl was leaving, the clerk halted. She’d made him quite miserable, and he would not be bested by some trite Pole pretending to know the Germanic language, let alone anything of the Reich, of the Party, of what the Nazi ideology conceived amongst the German born. He turned then, and his voice pierced through the stagnant air.
“Your papers, girl.” And again, when she did not immediately comply. “Deine Papiere, Mädchen!”
Soldiered voices echoed in the stale silence the man’s barking order had created.
“…Wenn das Heidekraut rot-lila blüht,
singe ich zum Gruß ihr dieses Lied
Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein,
und das heißt: Erika…”
They took him. They took him and now their mother was gone as well, vanishing each day to find a husband who had surely been no more than misplaced. Even when physically present, Catelyn Stark’s mind went with him, eyes seeing but unknowing of the slow crumbling of her family. Occupation harmed any of his blood, wealthy or no, soon driving the eldest son to seek work in a city increasingly adoptive of the German ideology. Care of the younger ones fell then to Sansa, a mantle taken up with swift efficiency. Food and clothes and school became of greater concern than the handsome boy who sat two rows over, the beautiful evening gown hanging in the tailor’s window, or the newest picture her peers rushed to when the weekend finally came. Family was paramount.
But every child requires a parent, not a sibling; for all her efforts, the meals were not as filling, tears were not dried as well, and the hand they held in the street was too slim, too smooth to guide unerringly. Sansa implied and suggested, she cajoled and begged; only when tears threatened in mirrored blue did all the other duties come crashing back in frightful reality upon the mother. No semblance of normality might be eked in a world where men were snatched from their shops on account of which god they chose to worship, yet the Starks might create one of their own in the Krakow apartment; though shadowed by loss and rage, a mother’s smiles might return. Instead it was Sansa, so near to the end of her education, who abandoned more traditional duties for a daily pilgrimage to emblematic offices.
These men – more boys, than men in truth – were soldiers, police officers, whose calling centered about a desire to protect and serve. Gathering what proof and stories existed of Eddard Stark’s seizure, his daughter kept each paper in careful stacks, organized with meticulous obsession. Proof. He was gone and no others would see fit to steal him. Monochromatic accounts of his worth when first the city was emptied, two years of unwavering industriousness. One of the carpenter’s desks even sat in the very building in which she pled her case! Could blood be so foul, a heritage such a distasteful stain on a country they held no real claim to, that these wool-swathed strangers could in good conscience see fit to spirit studious citizens away to destinations unknown? This was not the way the world was meant to be. A conviction she held as firmly in her breast as the knowledge that her father was stolen with neither justification nor warrant.
Sansa’s command of the invaders’ language was near impeccable, and certainly better than some of the more provincial of their recruits. Lessons were her strength, every book, every task poured over until conquered. French, too, might be comfortably navigated, and English could serve during brief introductions. Each day she strode into the offices, no glance spared for militaristic shows or curious officers, papery bundle clutched tightly against poppy-red coat. Patent shoes gleamed as brightly as any foot soldier’s, dress carefully rid of any wrinkles that might offend. Just as the swastika-clad visitors engaged daily in shows of strength, so too did she place her faith in the power of presentation. The Starks were a kind family, a harmless family, whose patriarch had done no wrong. A mistake had been made, a return imminent, for how could so beautiful a child come from so detestable a creature?
Yet each day, the same results. Nein. At times patient, at times kind, though more often than not whichever clerk hunched behind his desk could not be bothered to even look at doe-eyed inquirer before offering brusque dismissal. Courtesy reigned supreme. Bitte. Wenn du könn…Wenn Sie nur sehen…So insignificant as to not even cause a stutter in the inexorable grind of the Reich’s greased machinations. Desperation made the masquerade of tolerance falter, lips pulled taut and brows drawn down. “Es muss ein Fehler sein! Wenn Sie nur überprüfen — !” To no avail, insistence met with cold threats as to discipline. Sansa froze, certain that any noise beyond her breath might stir the toad-like man to act.
“ — Ja. Danke.” Return seemed unlikely, so long as his face loomed behind the counter. She had failed, any fate of her father’s now solely at the gleaming shoes of the daughter unable to sway a bureaucracy. With a tremulous gasp she watched the papers tangle and wrinkle, standing at the inhospitable desk only so long as it took to smooth the creases and restore them to order. Hope was not entirely lost, the words might still hold some potency.
Perhaps it was the final, polite surrender. Perhaps it was her near constant presence amidst beige walls. Perhaps it was rage at a girl so young displaying the courage to challenge infallible authority with neither gun nor torch. Whatever compelled the man to turn, whirl he did, red-faced and demanding. At first his command was not understood. Her papers? Did he mean to tromp off to some back room, blow dust from obscure records and excavate her father’s name? Oh. Her papers. With a sidelong glance clearly asking if the band about her arm would not suffice, Sansa fumbled with her bundle of proof until she could extract the bound squares assuring any official of her status. Half Jew, half gentile, with all the fair coloring of her mother, yet a trace of her father’s solemnity. “ —- I…I meant no offense, sir,” she choked, handing over the identification with a hand oddly lacking in tremors. “My brothers, my sister, they miss their father. If I could only tell them where he is…”
Outside, they sang of flowers. No petals yawned wide in the ghetto, though once she and her mother had tended a riot of color outside the kitchen window. Sansa wondered if any blossomed in Germany as well.
It was a bold statement: wearing red amongst a sea of blacks and grays. Her crimson coat marked her. Identified her. Transformed her into something that was no longer a passing interest, no longer something forgettable. Depending on one’s intentions, it was a strategy that could be either very stupid, or, very smart.
In Sansa’s case, perhaps, it would be both.
In passing, a man, as black as she was red, brushed by her, heading inward. The flutter of his wool long-coat obediently offered him an elegant dignity to which no other seemingly was granted that given morning since the girl’s arrival at the administrative offices. Then came the same shrill voice in repeat, addressing her in a reprimanding tone. “Deine Papiere, Mädchen!” The administrative clerk snarled at her, teeth bared between thinly pressed lips. With great irritation were her papers snatched by the clerk, a man who was easily her senior by many vast years, documents rumpled between an angry fist. Never did he look at them.
“Arrest her!” The clerk commanded, his words blunt. With a crisp gesture two armed soldiers existing until that point as nothing more than living shadows lurched forward to seize the girl. Such a cry for punishment naturally beckoned and roused the interests of other familiar patrons. Baelish, too, with a look over one shoulder, towards the furious clerk, towards the poor girl in red, whose arms were cruelly wrenched between unrelenting German grips. As Obersturmführer, Baelish controlled the entire local regiment of infantry as well as gestapo – and far more than that. This man, this lowly German clerk, was neither an officer nor a military man in any sense of the word. He was merely galvanized by his own rage, his own pithy sense of self-entitlement. And what an entitlement it was: divine right.
The man in black turned, slowly, eyes affixed to the sudden captive. Cerberus might snarl, Cerberus might drool, Cerberus might open his ghastly maw to rend the accusing clerk with rows of serrated teeth. Instead, Cerberus paid the messenger little mind at all, and would barely acknowledge the passing of documents from hand to hand, the screeching of the clerk demanding justice. Cerberus’ attentions, like so many others’, were on the girl in red. Not simply because of the striking hue splashed so vividly across her, nor because she had come equipped with so unfettered a tongue. Certainly, in addition to these things, but not because of them. Cerberus looked towards her, the girl masquerading as a rabbit in the brush, who should not move, not even an inch, lest she be spotted by the legions of frothy, blood-thirsty hounds surrounding her simply because she had crossed the threshold from the unseen to the seen, from the unworthy to the worthy, from the dead to the living. She had positioned herself with a person recognized as being just that: a person. She was not merely a smoky wraith, passing through walls, burdened by chains and sorrow, but instead a living, breathing entity, made of flesh, filled with thick, hot, gushing blood; all of it red, like her coat.
The luminosity of delicate milk white flesh, the flawlessness of it, darkened if but fractionally in the shadow of the Beast or perhaps that of Death, one being equal to another, incestuous siblings that entwined together their existence. God-like entities that knew no boundaries, but shaped life in seemingly simple decisions swayed by emotions dictated by the doctrines of the Medieval Church, by that of the seven deadly sins. Old and haunting was the Beast, was Death, was that one entity, and as it drew closer to the girl, fear ought to have gripped her, strangled life from the red bird who fluttered with complex strains of ideology, hope and compassion – but the aura of the Beast, of Death, teased her senses, toyed with them. Flashing cruel matters of hope like thick slabs of meat before a starving retch.
“Let me see.” Baelish held a hand out to the clerk, who turned and regarded him with a none-too-subtle flinch, having only just realized exactly who stood beside him. The girl’s papers, tepidly, were passed the officer’s waiting hand. Then they were unfolded, gray eyes scanning briefly over the typed blocks. Briefly enough to espy a name. Oh, but is that not what the man with a clear fondness for red was looking for? Eyes flicked back towards the girl and there was a small smile on his face, though it’s uncertain whether the man meant for it to be comforting or menacing. Even the tiny, silver skull ornamented on his cap seemed to smirk directly at her, eyes hollowed and emptied. “For what cause?” Frosted moss shifted from the girl to the clerk, who responded with a terse tightening of the mouth, his hands flexing restlessly.
“That girl caused disorder amongst a public German office.” Came finally the man’s answer, backed by an angry, determined diligence.
“Mm,” Baelish acknowledged.
Without a missing a beat, the clerk retorted, nearly viciously, “She was insolent and blasphemous.”
Turning away from the clerk, Baelish’s gaze returned to the girl named Stark, where it settled, and lingered. She with a face most familiar. The look of another, at just such an age. But the armband marking her as a lesser thing had not gone unnoticed. “Ja, I’m sure she was.” Baelish stared towards her, unblinking, waiting for the little rabbit to dare twitch a single whisker. There was a fine line drawn in the snow and ice: one side represented a well-deserved superiority, one which meant that as a German you deserved respect; the other represented the abuse of the system, which caused not only malcontent but unnecessary work. The decision wavered from humoring the clerk’s acrimonious testament, to issuing curt castigation by means of letting the girl go.
Two fingers gestured, in an avant-garde beckon towards the pair of soldiers, who near-instantly moved obediently away from the red-headed Jew. What a strange and lovely sight a red-headed Jew made. The clerk silently seethed, but spoke nothing more, slinking away back into the mire of paperwork bestowed upon him. Those same two fingers then formed long, delicate press around the girl’s papers, stretching outward, offering them back to her.
“Is your mother a Stark? Nee Tully?” The Nazi officer inquired, brows raising slightly in their request. Entirely unafraid, uncaring, unconcerned by the throng of onlookers, which spoke a great deal as to how the man in black existed. The smile he offered her was as cordially disarming in practice as one could hope— but no bird would be so foolish as to fall sway to the sinuous curve of feline whiskers, no matter how inviting the allure. Would it?
” — What, no – ?!“ There was no struggle, only the gust of shocked protestation as fingers twined about her arms like venomous creepers, prickling vines moving with strangling intent. Thin yellowed papers distinguished by obvious care - neither water stains nor ragged edges marred the presentation of face or status. Though the sheets hardly looked freshly printed, they rested in the possession of one capable of looking past the insult, the oily disdain that blotted ink across settled pulp to accuse, and instead seeing their worth. If she only cooperated, respected the system imposed, then the sacrifice would be acknowledged, reciprocated with scraps of knowledge or simply peaceful days.
Though tears threatened, briny rage only hovered on lids drawn wide in frightful anticipation. "No, please — ” Sansa began anew, until an entirely different creature took notice of unconscionable commotion. A nameless clerk might only exercise the power to hold her through until supper, perhaps the next day, yet she recognized every thread of the pressed jacket turned towards the once scuffling trio. Schutzstaffel. Swastikas were made menacing by the men who donned them, eagles possessed of majesty inherent, but skulls - to wear one proudly across the brow set her stomach to churning.
I only want to find my father, she yearned to explain. Grown now, these men all once had sires of their own, who taught them reading and hunting and how to knot silk about their throats. These men were just that: men. No more or less than she, save perhaps the weight of worldly experience. You have them as well, sapphire accused. Would you not seek them out when taken? Mouth threatened greater mourning in a sad downturn, hardly a twitch before it was forced into the same unfeeling line as those about her.
I will not apologize. All that provides is an admission of guilt.
Sansa stared not at the oncoming man, but the human remains emblazoned upon his cap. Eventualities, her father had said. Lists of names offer no security, only power. And now his had vanished. To Hitler’s bureaucracy, Eddard Stark simply was not. Unlike her, red-cloaked petitioner, painfully alive, painfully present as roughly handled papers were claimed by more solicitous hands. The girl’s eyes descended warily to the leaflet, willing it to be enough, to be satisfactory to let them let her leave. There was no possibility of return now, a thought spawning fissures in fast-beating heart, for she would risk no other sibling on the errand lest her own conduct be used as an excuse for their own maltreatment.
Shuffling between the soldiers, in expression of discomfort rather than an impetus to flee, it was an accident of reflex that brought grey and blue together. For it is only human to meet look with look, stare with stare, though the fiend's smile was greeted only with an infinitesimal thinning of pursed lips. Preposterous it seemed, when the accusation rang out with indignant sputtering - that girl, that waif, disturbing the sanctity of German progress in any meaningful way? Were she not terrified for her life, Sansa might have expelled dry laughter in retort.
I wasn’t, I swear. Why else should you even have this office, keep these records, if not use them to help? Ned’s voice rumbled in her memory. To find us. To watch us. Sansa, darling, a uniform does not make them right. It makes them unified. The delivery of toneless agreement, however, rang familiar. A parent enduring common complaint, acquiescing if only to silence the irksome gnat’s protestations. Yes, yes, of course you were wronged. Now begone. Hope smoothed away the lines of trepidation drawing taut the flesh over cheekbones and jaw, though it could not be said that her expression was softened.
Until the guard melted away, shoulders drooping from lack of rigid support, mouth barely parted in grateful inhalation. Lest the ebony-clad man take the falsified offense more personally, thinking to handle so miserable a foe under his own authority. Tully eyes drifted from his, tracing a careful arc along the clerk’s path until he was safely ensconced with unhelpful records. Then they returned to proffered identification, thumb and forefinger extended in tentative pinch to retrieve her salvation.
Of course she is, her fouled thoughts snapped. With a nervous fluttering of lashes, at last registering the audience to which she was subjected, Sansa used the motions of tucking away papers, straightening her coat, to summon some imitation of civility to her manner. “Ja.” Had they harassed her mother as well? Frantically, she tried to recall if issued papers included a woman’s name prior to marriage. “Of München. She moved to Krakow after the War.” Ah, the command of Germanic tongue, explained, having been raised by a native speaker.
Sansa hated when they smiled, so reminiscent of innumerable slithering beasts. Snakes, rats, weasels: all unwanted, defined only by disingenuousness, predation, intent. But the gesture was returned, compunctious, with the barest upward twitch. Brash actions had been indulged in excess within the dull office that day, apparently; to risk another was folly. “She never mentioned knowing…” Soldiers. Save Eddard Stark, of course. “ – Visitors.” Sheaves of evidence were drawn up against her breast with freed arms, a thin shield against further attack. Then her down, down, down her eyes traveled, until they stared at the tableau of two gleaming pairs of black patent shoes. “I am sorry, Offizier, if your day was disturbed.” Even in so subservient a posture, her voice did not waver. “I meant neither impertinence nor disrespect in my visit.” Please, just let me go home.
Baelish noticed that – the lack of apology. Oh, but it was so frequently the first words out of their mouths, poured as though it were liquid gold, the likes stowed beneath floorboards and stashed within the walls. To be offered instead silence was a rarity. So young, to be so stalwart, especially among the increasingly entropic Polish. And she still had much to show for it. How quickly things would change for her. How quickly it would change for them all.
”Ja?” Parroted the officer, some small measure of surprise raising his brow aloft. “Of München?” Baelish’s smile veered condescending; how sweet of the red bird to offer. “Ah, little fraulein, then you must take me to her.” Spoken with all of the revelry of one who knew he could not, would not be refused. Not by a little red waif. Not by a Jew.
You’re very lucky, he’d warned, whilst the girl led him from the administration building towards the once and still affluent district of Kazimierz, comfortable in the intimation that it placed her in his debt. If it weren’t for me, imagine where you’d be! For that reason, perhaps, the canary did not sing, did not warn her family of the impeding danger she was bringing to their very doorstep. But how could she have? Within the confines of the administration building, surrounded by harmless clerks and men whose weapons were ink and paper, she had been ready to sing and alert the world of the poison threatening to fill its lungs. Now, a man in black beside her, a fine German pistol strapped to his waist, not a speck of ash adorning him but shrouded in death all the same, her silence betrayed her very nature. Perhaps the suppressed warble caught in her throat ever as painful as a sharpened épée, the likes of which would cut through her very vocal chords, morphing her into not a musical beacon of salvation, but instead, a convincing and worthless doppelganger. One who would watch, helplessly and in horror, as all of the miners around her fell, one by one, having succumbed to the toxic fumes.
Unless…
The officer, in his off-putting geniality, removed the pristine cap from his head as the fine oaken door was pushed inward. Then a soft voice, calling for its mother. Matka!
Summoned by the tentative warble, it was at once a flurry of disbelief, shock, surprise, horror, trepidation, recognition. Of mother Catelyn who gave death a name: Petyr. Childhood friends, they were, had been, a lifetime ago, before armbands were designed to mark the man as superior, and the woman opposite his inferior. Catelyn was notably suspicious, as any woman ought be who lost her husband to the Reich, who was suddenly reunited with an acquaintance from a time long since passed, whose loyalty had faltered from living flesh to ideology– or had it?
Children were banished to their rooms, eyes and faces both frightened and confused by the sight of a German inside their home. The officer stayed, for a time, more than an hour, less than two. Tea was served. Catelyn spared him sugar, though they scarcely had any. They spoke at length. Of the past, of the present, but never of the future, of which talk could only ever lead to a grim, taunting uncertainty. Everything was markedly cautious; it was not difficult not to trust a man dressed in black, the sort of man who had taken so much from them already. Petyr was more candid, but for both parties, details were out of the question, brushed aside as though they were unsavory bits of lint clinging to flawless wool.
Where so many parts of their conversation had been obfuscated by low tone and volume, parting words, held in echo at the stoop, had been easy enough to discern: “A shame such fine blood was wasted on a Jew.” And around a finger the officer had offensively twined a curl of Tully red, the same hue which had so caused him to intervene on the daughter’s behalf. Serendipity.
Then the man so named Baelish left. Block and house number was, with a cursory glance, committed to memory. A shame indeed. Greater still when the officer was able to swiftly find what had been so vehemently denied to the Stark girl: information on the missing father. Ah, but of course, any man who disappears under the cover of night and fog would have done something grievous to deserve it. For that, there could be no forgiveness. Nostalgia, a childhood affinity, was far from enough to save the family from their tainted blood.
Though there was no fog roiling along the cobbles, no mist slithering onward like a silver snake, it was the dead of night, clouds concealing the glow of the moon above, when again their door was violently splintered.
To scream was a worthless thing.
No one would come to help.
No one did.
Sansa nearly wept. Rather than being freed of the Devil’s clutches, his talons only sank deeper into tender flesh. Given the choice, she would rather languish in a windowless holding room, vanish as her father had, than set a trail of sugary morsels back to the haven of her family. “She — she does not know I’m here.” The instinct continued, young though the girl was, to shield those both weaker and stronger than she. It had been at her suggestion that child took the place of parent in the search, and the fox would not enter a rabbit’s warren forjust a little sniff.
Immovable was the man in black wool, however, and so she led him from offices down cobbled streets; at times ahead, at times behind, an awkward oscillation of one who knew more yet had no right to act as such. To think, a Jewish child leading a man such as himself through Krakow! For all her careful tending, Sansa could feel the papers begin to crinkle upon her chest, pulled tighter and tighter as they drew closer and closer. You’re very lucky, he’d said.I hate you, she’d thought. Only a nod, terse, betrayed her sense of hearing. And then the pair stood upon the threshold, where mercy failed yet again.
He will take us all away for this.
“ — Matka!” No sibling would come running at the call for their mother; no child deserved the sight of Death in their hall. An appearance made, Sansa rushed to her side, a frantic muttering of apologies, insufficient explanations, the pleading desperation of one who only wanted to set it all to rights. Petyr. That her mother knew such a beast, commanded the means with which to address it in familiarity, set the girl’s stomach to churning. Fingers a practiced comb calmed the eldest daughter until, still trembling, she was given the task of tucking all the rest behind heavy oak. Part way down the hall she glanced back as leaned forward in greeting; all Sansa saw were two armbands, conqueror and conquered.
It was not until gentle knockings summoned them to dinner that the younger Starks emerged; when helping to clear the table of their relative feast, Sansa again made an attempt at reparation. “Mama, he made me bring him, I couldn’t - ” The woman shushed her. “You’re not to go back again. We will find your father another way.” And so she stayed, brushing hair, folding clothes, doing her utmost to prove that nothing had changed.
Yet it was Sansa Stark, of sound mind and mature body, who was most affected by the Nazi’s brief social call. Every night came the dreams, men dragging her from a home cold and abandoned, eagles clawing at her face, air choked with ash and flame. Each vision brought her awake, sobbing and screaming in turns. “Ich habe ihn hier! Ich habe ihn hier und er wird wiederkommen. Er wird wegen mir nehmen uns entfernt!” were the cries swallowed by maternal shoulder, overlaid with susurrous noises of disagreement. Nothing had been spoiled, no wrong had been committed, all denials unheeded as monsters stalked every attempt at rest.
The disturbances drove her mother, the former friend of Baelish, to send her daughter away one Friday evening. Just one night with Jeyne, whose family sat near to theirs at Mass, flipping through magazines and sharing the rare morsel of candy, would surely settle the girl’s grief. As was so often the case, a mother’s intuition proved most sound. The Poole’s home was untainted by German plague, with corners free of shadows and rooms full of laughter as sincere as war allowed. Sansa’s was a peaceful slumber and cheerful farewell the next morning, with a small pack of clothes slung over one shoulder, a tiny sack with one candy for each sibling tucked inside.
To say their door was ajar when at last she arrived home would be a most horrific understatement - there was barely any door left at all. Treats tossed aside, satchel flopping on her back, Sansa ran, breathless, through each winding hall to learn what was already known. They were gone. Not relocated, for there were no signs of even harried packing. Gone. Stolen by fiends who might, at any moment, return to snatch her away as well. Why had they not come to Jeyne’s? Did they not know she was visiting? Did they not care? She, who had deigned to challenge their authority in what meek way was left to her? Would it truly be she who went unmolested?
Staring about her at the tomb that was once a home, Sansa noticed not the lengthening of shadows, the shifting light of a day expiring. When a hand was raised to her face it found cheeks dampened with tears. Had anyone heard her weep? Only when the moon rose high did she dare move, creeping back to the stoop and several doors over to where the Karstarks, distant cousins of her father, resided. Perhaps the Pooles were a wiser choice, clean-blooded as they were, yet Sansa could not bring herself to invite the same pestilence into their home as had swept through her own.
She lived in the servants’ quarters, long emptied when coin for such help ran dry, off the kitchen, appearing at meals or to hurriedly wash. There were no indications that any other of Ned Stark’s relatives were at risk, yet they were justifiably loath to tempt fate. That Sansa remained clothed, fed, kept under a roof away from snow and rain, was kindness enough, even if her days were defined by dull yellow bulbs and wary glances across ever-diminished meals.
❃
4 March 1941
Krakow, Poland
But Fate was a fickle creature, unavoidable yet wholly manipulable. And it came for them, nearly a fortnight after the Starks were reduced to a single, frightened girl. Officers looked not for an auburn-haired young woman when they hissed out commands to pack and seek out a new housing assignment behind high walls, nor would they find one: she made one request of her cousins, a small bottle of brown dye to cover the strange beauty of a red-headed Jew. Shoved with her pack beneath the narrow bed she waited. And waited. And waited. No one came looking and why should they? Each name had a tidy check mark at its left, there was no cause to waste a good German’s time on needless searching.
As before, she dared not move until well after the sun had set and the percussive, predatory ring of boots faded away. Pushing dusty hairs back from her brow, Sansa again discovered a tear-stained countenance. So undeserving she stood, to survive where others did not. Only a girl, a stupid girl prodding at the sleeping beast roaming Europe. Too small, too insignificant not to be herded with all the rest. At the doorway she paused, flitting back to pilfer what perishables could be taken from the pantry before vanishing into the night. A spectre, of opportunities missed.
Most of the streetlamps stood tall and dark, for whose way was there to light? Dancing from shadow to shadow, the girl moved with purpose in no particular direction, only wanting to be away, to be free, to be safe. Though Jews they were, it was a wealthy district abutting less shameful locales in which she lived, so it was not long before she entered blocks unmolested by Nazi hands. Lit blocks. Only for those hours were they unpopulated, residents happily slumbering through the onslaught of the previous day and ensuing night. Searching for god only knows what, Sansa crept along brick walls, avoiding aurulent pools of light, perhaps looking every bit the rat she stood accused of being. Until footsteps sounded out ahead, leading the girl to freeze, petrified, as they drew neared to the corner she had approached. Only when one boot tip cleared the final building did she flee, desperate, into the alley at her side. Too late, it would seem, as the steps scraped to a contemplative halt before resuming. Though it was the same light step, Sansa heard doom in every advance.
Krakow would be a clean city; one free of the vermin and their lies, their influence. A grim harbingering – the next Nazi stake driven into the land of Poland, further solidified the Reich, and Germany. Fifteen-thousand some-odd Jewish individuals were herded into the tall, boarded walls which surrounded the soon-to-be-abandoned Podgórze district: henceforth referred to as a ghetto. Thousands of families were uprooted and ushered between those walls, sealed in, like a tomb. With them they heaved all that their arms could carry; suitcases filled with jewels and furs, things that were of value, things that could be traded. A fine gold watch could easily be bartered in exchange for a larger flat, or else one which was not to be shared but quite so many others. A collection of coins could stipulate how close or far a person ended up from the mess building. These people were angry, but not stupid. They left behind them everything they owned: households filled with furniture, heaps of clothing, and keepsakes that simply would not fit within their modest confines.
Oh, but such a relocation did not happen without event. Without violence. Red smears along pale cobbles reminded those of what happened to dissenters, to individuals who dared balk or question the methods of their superiors. And it was not just blood which littered the roads. An impossible amount of suitcases and luggage bags, still filled though certainly not untampered with lined the walkways and roads like little beads along the seam of a fine dress. This, a direct result of space, or rather, lack thereof. Families had been organized and shoved into apartments like sardines into a can; six or seven families now occupied the space meant originally for one. As such, their belongings had been pruned. There was no room for the extra bag, the extra set of dress – and how delightful their tormentors had found this detail; what need did they have for a ball gown? A fine suit? Where would they be going? – and so they had been left behind. Later, trucks would come to cart them all away, though likely not before being rummaged through extensively by any number of individuals on the hunt for valuables.
But life would go on, inside the ghetto. For one could still have a life so long as they were alive. Some Jews would attend to a duty, some would be heard beyond the mouth arguing ferociously about the state of things. All of them would weep at the condition of their quarters, at the indignity they were forced to suffer, sharing a private space with strangers or acquaintances. In the day which followed that initial upset, dozens more families who had either managed to elude detection or who had been stupid enough to simply ignore the process, would trickle in, be given the worst accommodations that were still yet available, and stripped of most of their belongings. During the night, those not so lucky as to be given a second chance, had been carted out, and thrown into the back of transports, certain not to bother anyone ever again – for it was a well known fact that the dead did not talk.
And so they were stationed. Nazi soldiers on the hunt for those who sought to hide. Sleek and black as the night, faces and features obscured by the same shadows which gave swiftness to Sansa’s feet. Each casual smile as sharp and deadly as a knife’s blade; glinting in their mirth, their nonchalance, as they stood like reapers, waiting, always waiting. Pebbles scraped beneath boots. Laufen, kleinen Juden! Did she feel the darkness closing in on her? The claws scratching by her feet, teeth snapping at her ankles?
“…Wawel Hill, nested on the bank of the Vistula River,
and surrounded by the blue-green waters, surrounded by
the marshes, it proved to be a luxurious haven for the Slav
people,” Eddard’s voice lowered, and he drew nearer to
Sansa. His voice gripped into a mere whisper as if fearful
to utter the words. “But not safe enough was it, for in the
belly of Wawel Hill, deep within the underground caves,
there lived a dragon that possessed a demon’s ferociousness,
and preyed it did on those that were meek, their bodies
consumed by the dragon, their souls now possessed by it,
but never had the dragon expected his slayer to be but
one man…”
The darkening of the moon to a muted burning orange was reminiscent of wolf eyes peering into a barbed thicket towards the tender impeccant fawn encased within. Brambles which were meant to protect then became a prison of sour needles, dripping with toxic nectar. For there was nowhere left to run, with a shadow behind, and a shadow, too, lurking just in front of her. Foolish girl! Too late! Too late to stop from skidding into the man swathed in black wool. It was naught but a single cluster of burning embers, a beacon with which to focus panicked eyes. Roils of mist which might have been fog, instead, a poor girl’s breath, a poor girl’s terror. The man did not even require the displacement of his lit cigarette. It was still primly perched between two gloved fingers as his other hand gripped her arm, spun her to face him. The tutting of his incorrigible tongue broke the damp silence. “It is quite illegal to remove your star, little one.” For only a Jew would be so bold, so foolish, as to be out and skulking around on a night such as that. But the man’s voice was familiar enough – wasn’t it? If she did not dare to look, certainly she would hear. Memories triggered by a sense of sound, far too fresh to be buried by layers of time and confusion. Yet it was sight who gave the German pause. Hair a frightfully dull vision of commonality, yet her features were unchanged. When his free hand moved beneath her chin, to tilt her face upward so that he might confirm her identity, the acrid, silver smoke of his cigarette caressed her face. The heat of the ashes threatened to lick, threatened to burn.
“Ah. Frau Stark.” With a dirtied face and dirtied hair. Outside of the ghetto. And alive. “What a surprise, meeting you again.” Had it all been his doing? All of it? The Officer’s hold on her chin tightened, to the point of discomfort. The lit embers edged nearer to her flawless skin. “What are you doing here?” It was a low whisper, more dire than unfriendly. Germans stood little for incompetence, but less still for defiance. That she stood there before him was a mockery of every order he issued. Neither was she locked securely in the ghetto, nor was she somewhere, far and away, surrounded by gray ash. Yet it was not anger which bubbled and oozed inside of him. It was guilt. A stabbing throb within his chest, trickling down his throat, like sticky sap, difficult to swallow. “Come with me.” Little choice did the bird less all her red feathers have, for his ushering was a stiff jerk. Half of a cigarette was left behind on the cobbles to smolder.
“Papa,” Sansa murmured, cowering under her bed linens, her
voice small. “Are you certain Krakus slayed the dragon?”
Eddard paused by the bedroom door. “What do you think, my
dear Sansa?”
For one so carefully fleeing the oncoming tide of fascism, the little red wolf remained woefully shortsighted. Ghosts at her back, echoes at her front, surrounded by the threatening shades of memory, Sansa ran blindly from one possibility of refuge to the next. So entranced was she by obvious pursuit into the dim and narrow alley, dull locks tangling in irksome vines about her face, that the specter loitering at the passage’s end presented itself with the muffled thump of two chests. Her first reflex was to spin, perhaps encountering another refugee, and continue the harried evasion. Yet as feet scrambled to side-step, a vise formed where once the neatly embroidered Star of David had encircled slender bicep. Fluttering pulse began to throb in the crook of her elbow, the tips of her fingers, vessels constricting under an immovable restraint.
Herr Baelish! she nearly cried, a long drag on paper-wrapped addiction producing a flare of light to illuminate, like gunfire, the peering face of her dubious savior a few weeks prior. Teeth clamped down on the exclamation, a wash of copper filling her throat; no papers lingered on her person and, as he saw, no emblem marked the girl as anything undesirable. Though trembles raced down a form thinned by weeks of hiding, of uncertainty, the clear blue of Sansa’s eyes fixed to where his own had flashed in the cancerous glow. Discovered she may be, though it did not yet equate to unmasked. The little Stark girl possessed auburn hair, fine clothes, a certain discretion inherent to the upper class which imparted to unpleasant things a pleasant demeanor. Poise. But the orphan in his clutches dressed in second-hand garments, muted brown cascading over them past stiffened shoulders. And that stare. One of a condemned soul, determined to force Death’s unwavering attention as He bent close for mortal embrace.
“ —– I’m not…you must be mistaken – ” You have no proof. Rebuttals and denials cut off with the sharp pressure of fingers below her chin. Sansa’s stare endured, the corners of blue eyes twitching at ambient heat dangling from his fingers. Blue. Not the grey of her father, the Polish Jew who abandoned soldiering in a time of peace for carpentry, a wife, children. No, not grey. The summer sky blazed upwards into the abyss, an idyllic German horizon bequeathed by a mother stolen. Indisputable. Blinking, as though the rapid fluttering of lids might clear away traitorous hue and make her common, forgettable, a grimace wound across lips pinked by chill. Don’t burn me. Please don’t burn me. Were Sansa one of them, it would not be a mistake Baelish might be inclined to make.
Were Sansa one of them, it would be a bed, and not the dim alleyway, that hosted her in the grey hours between dusk and dawn. She need never have met the grinning skull or its wearer, nor lost kin to the thousands of swarming minions beneath him.
“Nothing,” she dared rasp, eyes finally darting towards moldering red and yellow and white, slaty ash flaking towards the ground. Ned Stark smoked but rarely, a polite social indulgence when offered as casually as others might extend a hand to shake. So unlike the suave men cutting polished lines across the cinema screen, masculine power cemented by that one slim accessory. Her father needed no such prop, commanding in quietude, strength the foundation of his kindness.
But Eddard Stark was dead, or nearly so. The creature wielding embers with reckless abandon, appearing neither kind nor quiet, held fast to the daughter and the daughter stood firm, undaunted by fire or darkness. “I’m not doing anything, officer.” Celadon would not even be surrendered to remind herself of his rank; glance away for but a moment and he might swallow her whole.
A pain at her shoulder and the world smeared, angling and righting as Baelish dragged the poor girl back along the path interrupted. I could scream, was Sansa’s first thought, before remembering that any rescuer who appeared would be enshrouded with the same fabric as he. I could run, was the second possibility, though even if she managed to wrench free of manacled grip the pursuit would prove a simple one. I could lie, came the remaining choice. Sansa Stark possessed auburn hair and fine clothes. I am no more than a plain-faced orphan, they cannot prove otherwise if I give them no cause. “Please. Please, officer.” Oh how desperate she sounded! They continued to weave through the murky streets of Krakow, her feet a quiet shuffling half a pace behind his own clipped steps. Please. Believe me. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she whispered. “Please, just let me go. I promise not to do it again!”
Denials! Do you think I am stupid, girl? The indignity of it, to suffer an animal’s response to being led away to the slaughter – oh but he would have expected frightful ululation, a vicious thrashing, a dead weight of one who has naught else to lose. Surrender, in the form of stone. Not such senseless convincing. Words which went entirely unaddressed, unacknowledged, by the man in black enveloped by the night.
Tenebrous, it was, knifing through the mists, feet slipping over damp cobbles, the cold constricting the flow of blood as panic sought to pump it faster.
“Schweigen.” The officer hissed in caustic irritation. When the man was satisfied that enough distance had passed from where he found her to where they were, he stopped. The mouth of a building, all stone in beautiful arch curving above them, shielded the pair. From what? Already the baleful eyes of the enemy shone down upon her, assiduous in their scrutiny.
“If you have done nothing wrong, what won’t you do again?” A tilt of his head made the rhetoric seem almost playful. Perhaps it was, in the certain way a cat will lazily bat about a mouse simply for the amusement for it, without any sense of hunger providing necessary motive. “Where is your mother?” A cruel question to ask from one who already knew the answer. “Why aren’t you with her?” A better question. Crueler still. Why aren’t you dead? How was it the daughter was left to wander Krakow? Assuming the identity of a mousy wretch?
“Did she do this?” A set of gloved fingers skimmed dull waves. “Jetzt können Sie wie einer von ihnen zu suchen.“ A tch sound echoed as Baelish’s tongue ricocheted off the back of his teeth. If she had gone blonde, they might have saved her. Perfectly pale, perfectly Aryan. She spoke German convincingly enough. “Foolish.” Then his gaze slanted away, in dire contemplation. She would be able to see his jaw working slowly, a pulse of muscle as teeth clamped tightly shut.
Would you condemn them all to die? It was a strange place for guilt to nag. In the distance, a crack of gunfire rippled, once, twice, then came a tenor of shouting. Instinct, obligation, bid him to look in the direction, but it was far, several blocks away. A deep breath unfurled in a cloud of mist from his mouth.
“Wussten Sie, dass wir Sie nicht finden, Liebling?” Eyes turned back to her. “Sweet red bird…” he cooed, one corner of his mouth cocking in something like a leer. “Ich werde dich beschützen.” The hand holding her captive loosened, stroking down the length of her arm, before falling away. She could run, if she dared, but there was nowhere to go.
There was no way to tell whether he meant to taunt her or offer her sanctuary. Not a single thing about the man seemed genuine; neither his smile nor his touch were welcoming. His tongue seemed only to mock. “Come,” he bid. A master speaking to his dog. “Take off that fetid coat. You look like an urchin.” And for what reason should he care how she look? “I can’t take you back like that. You are not the sort I bring home.” Back? Home? “You can wear mine. Act like you’ve been drinking.” A ruse, then. To what end? Sansa had asked only for mercy. Mercy she would receive. Deliverance of the most gracious sort.
The only sounds escaping from clamped lips were those of muffled breath and swallowed whimpers, which certainly would have formed a loud trail behind them had he not demanded quiet with such vehemence. He was armed. They were all armed, pistols and rifles and blades, admittedly meant more for ceremony or practicality than blood-letting. A penumbral alley served well enough for impromptu slaughter; would it be an exhibition, instead? Look and see, you who think to flee! Beneath the shackle of Baelish’s hand, she began to tremble. There was no dignity in a public dead; there was no dignity in death at all, as these invaders doled it out, but Sansa preferred the steady drip of water, or whistling breeze, to the ringing of jeers as a final sensation.
No sooner had she been dragged to the temporary shelter than Sansa shied into its shallow corner, obvious in her desperation to gain distance from the executioner. A drastic change from the defiant stares and stammering lies of a few moments prior, the creature whose chin tucked into one shoulder, lashes squeezed shut against whatever horror lurked beyond. Please, don’t let it hurt. Please don’t let me hurt. Cold, aching, hungry, prayer was the sole scrap left to tug about her in flimsy defense. ”Weil du Not,“ she blurted. ”Ich will Sie nicht wieder aufgeregt.“ As she plucked up the resolve to continue on in a breathy condemnation of wandering the streets after dark, the soldier dared speak of her mother.
”You took her.“ All pretense forgotten in the light of fresh grief, Sansa’s face snapped away from knitted refuge, jutting forward in accusation. "I came home and they were gone,” she hissed. Did he know? That the Starks had vanished from Krakow well before all the others, leaving but a single poppy blooming in the ruins? He had to. Intricacies of the German command were lost on a girl encouraged to pay them no mind, but power was plain enough to see. That day in the office, walking through bustling streets, even standing tentatively at her family’s threshold - questioning looks followed the girl wondering not what necessitated the presence of any officer, for there were any number of reasons why one would be compelled to accompany her, but rather the escort of that particular man.
Forgetting herself, her place, her throat plainly bared to wolfish hunter, Sansa’s hand swatted up, batting away cursory fingers along stained tresses. Immediately the weight of insult settled heavily on her shoulders. She had struck one of them. No matter that it was an airy brush hardly sufficient to redirect pestilent gnats, forces neither physical nor verbal could ever be used to discourage Poland’s most cherished guests. “Verzeihen Sie mir!” she gasped, hand curling tightly to her chest whilst her chin tucked down and away. “Du hast mich erschreckt. Es tut mir leid, bitte…”
Deadly percussive reports squeezed blue eyes into an even tighter squint, awaiting another series far closer. Burrowing further into the shadows, every inch of Sansa’s posture spoke not to a dire need to flee, but to disappear. If she could but become another shade herself, dissolve into blackness and be forgotten, no pain could follow. Fingertips began to prickle - the man’s grip had relented. The girl did not for a moment consider escape, wedged as she was between chill stone and ebony uniform. “ ——– Schützen Sie mir?” Exhaled, uncomprehending. No need remained for lies, if returning her to the walled ghetto stood his only goal. Young, slim, exhausted: Sansa Stark posed no threat to a hale military man of singular mind. “Das ist nicht…” That is not your task, she nearly blurted, before obediently working at the buttons of her overcoat. Hardly ragged, merely a jacket outgrown by her saviors’ eldest daughter and consigned to mothballs until her untimely arrival. Red was too easily sighted. Logic which also compelled the dying of multifaceted strands, well after a mother’s disappearance.
The fabric dropped dully to the pavement, no consideration given to its reclamation, while a hand extended to take its suggested replacement. Only then did Sansa’s gaze drift out of its refuge to meet beryl turned slaty in the low light of evening. Though only slightly smaller than him, Baelish’s coat still hung off her frame in the way any man’s clothes sagged when worn by a woman. Overly broad in the shoulders, sleeves reaching her knuckles, hem nudging an unfamiliar height behind her legs. Enveloped in an aura of cigarette smoke and shaving soap, Sansa pulled the garment more tightly about her until the coat, winking with proof of fiendish accomplishments, hid any trace of other clothes.
“But I never have.” Been drinking, that is, aside from small sips of punch at parties or a glass of champagne over the holidays. A young lady must never overindulge, her parents had intoned. Take no more than is polite. A warning more than a refusal, as Sansa’s arm looped with his as she knew men escorted women. What are you doing, you fool? Yet cries for help would only be met by more of Baelish’s kind, flight leading her to the clutches of another soldier, another executioner. No other way remained. To seek one was only folly. A trembling nod, head once more tucked down from his stare, and the little Stark girl stepped with her guide into the halo of light beyond the stoop.
Sansa could not tell if her walk conveyed drunkenness, though it certainly reeked of dependence. Clinging to his arm, leaning somewhat against Baelish’s side, eyes downcast as she allowed him to lead her though the darkened city streets. Once or twice uneven cobblestones made the girl stumble, until her far hand curled into the crook of his elbow. There was no need to die aching from a fall. When at last they stopped, it was not before the gates of the ghetto or the entrance to the offices where first the pair had met. This was an entirely different door, unseen until that night. “ — Where…?” Cerulean flicked up, unsure, wavering. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I took her?” Baelish parroted, eyes widening in mock concern as if stunned by the accusation. The Officer loomed closer, until their faces were very near, his voice very low. “Where did I take her, do you think? What did I do with her?” A terrible question with even more terrible answers. Answers the man knew. Answers which could never be spoken aloud lest someone were to overhear. Yet still the man waited. Waited for her to say it, for her to dare accuse him. Bravery, conviction, resolve – those were all traits to be admired. But stupidity could not be helped. To not know what you were, what your surroundings were, who you were surrounded by, and adjust your tenacity accordingly, only made you indomitable in the realm of idiocy. There was the barest twitch of one brow, his expectation for her silence met, and then her personal space was restored.
Only for the space of a breath in which a girl was foolish enough to strike her savior. As worthlessly vicious as it was potent, yet an insult it remained at the same. Not even her swift apologies could sway the turn of steely gaze. Would you slight me? He looked down upon her, indeed, as if she were a lesser thing, with the infinitesimally fine lifting of his chin, eyes partially-veiled beacons of judgement. The fearful show of remorse, for anyone else, would have been entirely insufficient. Why then for the girl whose own mother had given him little hesitation did he stay his indignation? His punishment? Smart she was when she reminded him that to protect her was not his task. Rather, it was entirely the opposite. Obligation mired with guilt. For what reason did he have to risk anything, let alone everything, for a foolish waif who knew not the world she lived in?
It gave him pause. No words were spared towards her grievous lapse of judgement, but none were needed. The cold stare loudly spoke all that need be said. Gray eyes shifted over her face, reconnoitering the intent of a girl; the actions of a girl; the very existence of a girl. If she could not control herself, even when it meant life or death – how could she be trusted? Dire questions, in need of thorough answers, but the Officer wouldn’t find them there, beneath that stone arch. He watched as her fingers trailed down her buttons, watched as the coat was shed to the ground in a rumpled heap as though she were a moth ridding itself of its cocoon. Baelish’s coat, by compare, was elegantly shrugged off of shoulders, handed over to her by perch of two careful fingers which held it aloft as though it were too precious to risk skimming the ground’s foul dampness. Indeed, the uniform beneath was as flawlessly pristine as the coat which had concealed it. Everything pressed, everything above reproach.
It was silence as the pair walked. There were no encouraging directives, no whispered words of praise as she clutched to him or stumbled over slick cobbles as though she’d been careening the night away with a glass of bubbly perpetually pinched between fingers. She did well, for one claiming to have never acted the part, but there was no one to fool. No one was stupid enough to be outside on an eve such as that. No one save for Sansa and her ilk.
“Do to you?“ The man seemed nearly aghast at the suggestion that he had a mind to do anything to her. In his mind there was a tentative nothing, a hovering in limbo, no decision made in favor of one direction or the other. There was no flash of metal key before teeth ground against its lock. The door opened without so much as a cursory whine. Every hinge oiled to soundlessness. The Officer, guiding Sansa by the small of her back, ushered her inside.
"Take it off,” was the first thing he said. Ominous words perhaps, for a girl whose mind whirred with the grim possibilities of what the man in black intended to do with her. But Baelish was more concerned with the finery of his coat than anything the muddy-headed girl had on beneath it. No lights were switched on. Intentional details which gave credence to a late-night tryst. Even without the lights the interior of the apartment was easy enough to gauge. The casual opulence, the very specific scent of recently-burned candles reminiscent of Shabbat. Whoever had lived in the flat prior to Baelish had very likely been Jewish.
Heavy booted feet carried the officer into a sitting room, where the man sunk down into a large padded chair, arms finding their rests as though he were perched on a throne. But any notions of royalty were choked and extinguished by the presence of Sansa Stark: a mere pauper, a stain, a plebeian waif in need of mercy.
“You have no right to be here,” he called, from atop his lordly throne. “If I take you to the ghetto you will be removed. You don’t belong there.” She belonged wherever her family was. Wherever her family was. “But you can’t stay here.” The words that were spoken, though they were aloud, though they seemed to be directed at her, were more for his benefit than hers. A working out of options. Made more tangible when spoken to the darkness. For was it not the cover of night, the shading of all sensibilities, which made the world what it now was? “Not you, anyway.” A set of fingers rose to prop his head up at the temple. Had Sansa been closer, she might have been able to see the subtle working of his jaw, of teeth grinding over one another in careful rumination. Why did he care? The malfeasance of mercy came not without risk – but what of the malfeasance of his soul?
The silence then was long, stretching, endless. No decisions of such magnitude could be made with haste. Throughout, the man stood, the man wandered in affectation of a more nervous pacing, the man stared out a window covered in light and airy curtains.
"Your mother would want you safe,” he finally spoke, in low tones entirely stripped of their authoritative arrogance. “I suppose…I owe her that.” It was not quite resignation as much as it was reconciliation. A debt was paid, now a debt was owed. The officer turned, facing Sansa in a darkness no longer so grave, eyesight long having adjusted. “If you wish to leave, you may leave.” A barren gesture was spared in direction of the door. “If you wish to stay—” A long, contemplative look found his eyes glued to hers. “—you may stay.” The implications of such a bargain were too dire to consider at a moment’s notice, and yet, one would be a fool to test the patience of amenity.
His touch repulsed the girl, despite bearing naught but courtesy - with perhaps a twinge of non-negotiable persuasion - beneath pressured fingers. An open door gave invitation regardless of language, creed, or nationality, and Sansa was not inclined to wander beyond the darkened foyer. Yet the mistake of defiance had already marred their stilted conversation beneath stony shelter; remembering his stare, cold enough to singe delicate irises, grey like iron, like steel, like the oiled gleam of the pistol belted tight to his hip, she wisely swallowed back protests of her autonomy. Jews had no independence now. Certainly not those wandering the streets of Krakow, avoiding patrols of soldiers with clumsy feet. The lucky few, perhaps, retained no more than hope.
Unlit, with neither gaslamps nor stars to light the way, the rooms about Sansa hummed with ambiguity. Immediately to her front, lightened squares in neat lines along the paper walls spoke to framed portraits taken down not long ago. Requisitioned, then, from the only sort of occupants whose departure would be so hastily followed by the new tenant’s claiming as to prevent the correction of such details. Still staring, still reconnoitering environs with their meaning - Baelish had taken her to his home - aimless fingers lifted up to fumble in borrowed finery. Forgetting it had never been clasped, some moments passed before Sansa shrugged off the garment, much more carefully than her own discarded coat, and draped it over one forearm. By habit eyes of the mother darted about, falling on the expected line of hooks; black wool moved to hang in elegant drape upon one, fingers smoothing down rumpled sleeves, encouraging pleats to fall as they were pressed.
But you brought me here. Sansa fingered the drooping collar. Astonishing, how a plain swath of black fabric and silver piping could inspire such fear, such loathing. Adornments were carried beneath, on the uniform proper, a man never risking shedding them for a simple change in clime. The double lightening bolt remained, however, a plasmic strike in the shadowed hall. Sansa moved to the threshold which he had already crossed, a slow blink proving fruitless at forcing pupils to accommodate a more nocturnal illumination.
Not trusting herself to speak, sensing the precipice on which the man wavered without understanding what lay to either side, the refugee merely lingered in the doorway. One shoulder propped gently against the frame, arms a protective circle about her abdomen, Sansa gazed at the polished wood beneath her feet. Spotless. Though acquired second-hand, the home was clearly as meticulously cared for as its owner’s garb, losing none of its value for the quality of previous occupants. She did not respond to his ponderings, she did not track his migrations about the sitting room, hearing alone giving suggestion as to Baelish’s position. Not once did he approach her, for which the girl was grateful. Enough time had passed in silent rumination that when he broached the specter of her mother, Sansa had largely calmed. Securing another wayward Jew behind the ghetto’s walls required no contemplation, nor did their summary execution when found outside the enforced shelter - both directives had been witnessed firsthand that day, carried out by soldiers far less intelligent than Baelish. If they suffered no hesitation, nor should he.
“Owe her? What could you possibly owe her?” Ivory chin cocked up, attention now sharply focused on her unanticipated host. An officer of his importance would likely know of the sort of midnight calls which spirited away mother and siblings, but —– could he sit so high as to have given the command? Or was it guilt over foreknowledge, drinking tea sprinkled with saccharine rarity, exchanging childhood reminiscences with a walking corpse? She wasn’t your friend, Sansa thought viciously. She never even told us you existed. What debt would she call upon from one of you? Blue shifted to the far window, lest it take on accusatory airs. Counter to every public directive, this officer had extracted her from the clutches of a public servant and now delivered her to the relative sanctuary of his home. Looking up, it seemed to Sansa that his eyes now had a greenish tinge to them, some nocturnal beast whose irises caught distant starlight. Stalking…yet sated.
“Stay…how?” Curious, rather than challenging. To tuck her beneath another set of floorboards implied knowledge, intent, treason. In plain sight, however, she might serve as maid or cook, roles never taken on in the Stark household. “I wouldn’t know how to keep a house this large.” What was worse - the targeted attentions of one angered Nazi, grousing on dust and wrinkled clothes, or the vague, looming threat of a faceless regime within the shrunken ghetto? Both put Sansa’s stomach in knots, relaxed only by the knowledge that it was a luxury of choice denied any other Jew in the city. “Aber wissen Sie bereits, mein Deutsch ist passabel. I would not…” Endanger you. “ – Embarrass you.” That Baelish worried over the waif doing any such thing might seem absurd. Absurd enough that her eyes darted away, fingers lifting to form a nervous rake in dulled hair. Blue eyes, brown locks. It could pass. What other path was there? “ — I…I will stay, then.” Her lips pursed, as though swallowing a slight bitterness. “Danke, Herr Baelish.”
The darkness sparked cherry red. A cigarette was lit, dangling from the maw of the beast. The acrid scent of tobacco and smoke wafted through the room. The Officer kept moving, stepping, pacing. Slowly, slowly, in wayward circles as the girl spoke and quietly plead her case, making promises she couldn’t possibly hope to keep. What did she know of it?
“Your life, I suppose,” he replied, dully. Frightening, perhaps, in how very candid it was. That he spoke of the gravity of a person’s, of her, life with such flippant nonchalance. As if the essence of her, the very being of her, meant nothing to him – or to anyone of any import. She was a nothing. A shadow. A wraith. An insect skittering across the floor; better to stomp her and be done with her than take the effort to deposit her outside where she belonged. Then, what would be done with the unsavory froth to be found on the heel of his boot?
No. Petyr didn’t owe Catelyn; Petyr didn’t owe anyone. To remind him of it was a folly.
“I have a maid,” he waved off her first suggestion, as if it were a foolishness to even hint otherwise. Of course he did. The dwelling was spotless. Not a hair or fiber out of place. It was scented faintly with lye or some other cleaning substance. Something told the girl that whoever was tasked with cleaning his home likely had a very difficult, unpleasant job.
“Dein Deutsch ist Scheiße!“ he snapped, cutting her off, quite viciously. In the dark, his voice seemed to carry further and longer than it actually did. No one would buy her German as being anything but a decent facsimile of the real thing. She was Polish. Tainted with a Polish accent. Polish skin. Polish eyes. He turned to her, pivoting slowly on one heel. One brow gently rose behind the tendrils of silvery smoke. Eyes watched intently as her hand raked futilely through dull hair.
Polish hair.
Baelish blinked, slowly, chin lifting so faintly it would have been easy to miss.
"No, I know you won’t,” he silkily agreed, lips twisting into a smile. A smile that was undoubtedly meant to be reassuring but only succeeded in invoking emotions entirely of the opposite sort. Oh, no, she would not embarrass him. Never that. To even think it would be too great of an offense to fathom. The cigarette rested gracefully between two fingers as he crossed the room and stopped before her. Tiny columns of bluish smoke spiraled lazily towards the ceiling beside him. But it was his gaze which burned, burned, like embers, like searing ash, as it shifted over her features, judging her. Every inch. Every contour. Every line. A hand lifted to collect ribbons of her hair between his fingers. His mouth stretched into a thin, disapproving line. “You’ll get rid of this. Hideous. Like mud.” For what reason did the color of her hair matter to anyone? Would not a less assuming color be to her, to their, greater benefit? The hand fell from her hair, to take hold of her shoulder, adjusting her, encouraging her to straighten. Then they tapped briefly beneath her chin.
“You will be my whore.” There was no lascivious look in his eye, no leer curving his mouth. Everything about the statement was calculated and cold. “Why else would a young woman suddenly be living with me?” He posed the question to no one. To everyone. For a moment, his lips pursed, as if in thought.
“Ja. I think so.”
Possess a maid the man very well might - whether Sansa’s duties would consist more of cleaning or of staying well out of sight, what difference could it possibly make in appearing to take on a second? The house was spacious enough, to be sure, though a sole occupant did not demand the excess of care found in a multitude of servants. For a moment she thought to apologize, explain that of course Baelish employed such help, considering the state of his abode. But no. Enough had been spoken in the way of peacekeeping, the casual dismissal allowing the girl to at least believe he found the suggestion undesirable, rather than insulting.
”Mein Deutsch ist einwandfrei!“ And so emerged the mother, Catelyn Tully, birthed and raised in proud Munich, whose accent did not fade when a wartime love carried her across the Polish border, whose daughter lent careful ear to diction, whose indignation flared in a celestial burst of Baelish’s mother tongue. "Simply because I choose not to demonstrate it with strangers in the dead of night…,” she gasped, coppery taint filling her mouth as incisors clamped down on further outbursts. Fists, too, clenched against slender thighs, knuckles pulsing as control was wrested back.
It occurred to her then, caught in unrelenting stare of grey-green, that perhaps the ghetto would serve better. One in a swarm of thousands, with no call for pointed looks or individual attentions, so long as they caught sight of no more than the mousy crown of dyed roots. Anonymity. How blessed that might be! Even in the wake of starvation, exposure, relocation - general horrors for a general future, rather than the immediate scrutiny she stood beneath in those moments. Do not act the fool. Ghetto, gallows: both pathways to an unmarked grave. He named your life as the price of his debt. Collect it. Keep it.
Neither wafting smoke nor timidity diluted the soldier’s appraisal; Sansa was spared the shove of its full attention, occupied instead with tracing the lines of features more German than Polish, more Gentile than Jewish…yet tainted nonetheless. Crystalline irises only faltered to track the advance of unoccupied fingers, anticipating pain and suffering grazing brush. “Its dye.” Fuller lips than his pursed into a line equally thin. “It is not meant to be gotten rid of. Not easily, at least,” she conceded. An inexpensive concoction, to be sure, whatever could be acquired with the greatest simplicity and least commotion. Yet even the cheapest tints might require an hour or more bent over steaming water, paired with the liberal application of vicious hands and rarefied soap.
“You were the first to even give pause.” Then like a child before her schoolteacher, Sansa’s spine straightened to its accustomed rigidity, shoulders lifted and draped to practiced poise, hips and back and neck all aligned at just the suggestion of guiding touch. While such posture endured the proposition of indefensible disguise, a wary eye might catch the drooping of sharp attention. “Your what?” Mouth twisted, the corners of her eyes wrinkled with insult, brow furrowed as if straining to catch alternative meaning. “I will not spread my legs for…for…” A German soldier. “ – You.” A string above her pulled taut and Sansa regained what scant height had been lost in shock. One sharp step removed her from the suffocating proximity of her rescuer. Her condemnation. “Nein. You could have…a niece…or - or a goddaughter…” Yes, her mother’s church had such arrangements; it would explain the lack of resemblance rather well, she thought. “There must be a better excuse than that.”
“Dein Deutsch ist was ich sage es ist.“ It was not so much biting as it was insulting. even disheartening, in its point: whatever the man said, whatever he did, was inscrutable. Petyr Baelish, Obersturmführer, was beyond reproach. Silvery green encouraged her with mocking light to dare say otherwise. “You won’t use it unless I say so.” There was nothing suspicious about a Polish whore speaking Polish; a Polish whore speaking flawless German was worth a second glance. Rather, a third, given the ivory features, the red hair, the long legs – all of that was worth the second. One wanted to be obvious, but to be too obvious failed to abide by the laws of human psychiatry, in blending in by standing out. Baelish’s Polish, conversely, was passable at best. Such things were of no concern to him. The man had not been sent to Poland for his skills in linguistics.
"Ja,” he acknowledged, cigarette rescued from the perch of his fingers. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.” The little white stick bobbed with each syllable. Baelish was confident that she would. How difficult could it be to scrub away that unseemly color? If she couldn’t, then he would – a slightly less welcoming option. A luxuriating inhale sparked the end of the cigarette to a neon red, the man hissing from one side of his mouth as he turned away, walking further back into the room. Along with smoke, laughter erupted from him. It was mocking and unkind, tapering off into something quieter, colder, soft and condescending as he spiraled down into the same chair from which he had started. One booted foot kicked up onto the matching ottoman.
”Little mischling,” he insulted. It needed no further explanation, truly. The single pejorative word marked her for what she was: a hybrid, a half-breed, a mongrel. A filthy creature with filthy Jew blood, a sub-human utterly unworthy of love or affection or even sexual desire. “I don’t want to fuck you.” As if the notion was repugnant, and along with the acrid smoke curling along his throat, caressing his lungs, was the creeping bile of distaste. “It is a ruse. A lie. A game. Do you understand?”
More condescending waves of his hand, dismissing her words as soon as they fell from her mouth in all their righteous indignation. “Nein. I don’t have a niece. I don’t have a goddaughter. I have a whore. A Polish whore.” His tone caressed the words as if already it were their little secret, their shared, private scandal of life or death. A lazy smile curled his mouth, arm slowly extending to flick with practiced grace the tower of accumulated ash from his cigarette into a small circular tray.
It was the perfect cover. No one would ask questions. No one would wonder where she had come from, who her family was, why she was not toiling in hunger or had clean hands. A kept woman. A Nazi’s whore. Plucked from the rabble because of her pretty face, ignored by and large because of how utterly insignificant she was. Just a woman. Just a pitiable creature willing to swallow her pride and open her legs in return for a better place to live, better food to eat, better treatment: a better life.
“You will stay here. Once I fashion you new papers, once you wash that foul color away…you may come and go.” His palm flapped back and forth: come and go. Almost as if he were a maestro directing a symphony. “You can do my shopping. The cooking. Things of that nature.” Domestic things, although certainly it was established already that he did not intend to dismiss his house girl.
“Ja?” he questioned. “What do you say?”
I am hardly the only Pole with a portion of your impeccable blood in my veins. Teeth ground over her tongue: an entire life had been spent, nearly, in speaking fast-forming thoughts as they came. Not without a mind for feelings or propriety, for surely the girl knew some topics were always better left untouched, but the officer’s emotional state mattered not at all in the light of life and death. “Wollen Sie – Do you want me to speak Polish to you?” she bit out after a moment. “Even like this?” Fingers spread and palms lifted to better indicate this as a state of isolation, with none to see them. Foolish child, to think he would feel a swell of admiration in hearing a tongue immaculately learned. How dare I speak it at all, she mused.
“It will take a fair deal of hot water,” the girl warned, a prisoner unused to such luxuries. “And good soap. Even then…” She was not a soldier, responding in desperation to orders of finding a way. She was far less. A prisoner. What shrug had begun to lift slim shoulders died away, energy focused instead on holding them rigid. So many objections, not nearly enough in the way of agreement. Sansa did not practice boot-licking, though she sympathized with those tempted to such measures; before, German soldiers were best avoided all together, too willing to bask in averted eyes and shuffling walks to the sidewalk opposite, fleeing before their magnanimous conquerors. Avoidance and cooperation remained two beasts entirely different, separated by pride and practice.
Nails dug into the girl’s palm as she endeavored to bury the former, and acquire the latter.
Perversely, no matter the condescending nature by which it rang, Baelish’s laughter unwound the burgeoning knot between her ribs. I don’t want to fuck you. Emphasis slyed there may yet be other ways in which he hoped to profit from the girl, but the immediate future did carry with it the possibility of unwanted advances, detestable acts of repayment. Such was apparent in the unconcealed disgust with which her outburst was meant. Sansa was comforted. Enough so that shoulders unwound to some ill-defined state of relaxation, her features falling away into repose. How one might see her naturally, walking along on an errand, reading quietly in the cushioned seat by her bedroom window. Present, yet lacking in edge.
“A whore…or your whore, hm?” Semantics to some, an important distinction in the girl’s mind. A whore would have taken on this officer as just another client, whether for one evening or as an extended arrangement: another man in a trailing line, hardly notable in a profession driven by the loneliness and isolation so fruitfully driven by war. His whore, while not a young woman untouched, benefited from the presentation of opportunity alone. Troublesome pride, rising up once more. While she could abide being thought of as one who would part her legs for one in power, the idea that others could conceive of sex as her enduring profession sat as a prickled ball in her gullet.
Every game had its rules, its boundaries, guidelines to facilitate play whilst guaranteeing no more than one could win. Sansa would worry over the latter some time later. For now, how to begin. The threshold to his sitting room had until now been an invisible, impassable border. Petyr sat within, she stood without. But a whore, his whore, could surely walk where she pleased inside his house. And so several steps brought her closer to where the officer lounged, until she stood beside the ottoman where one boot twisted in casual angle. When Sansa spoke again, her voice had miraculously gained strength free of petulance.
“How did we meet?” Men would not care: she was pretty to look at, pleasant to speak with, and hardly so Polish in coloring as to offend his fellow soldiers. But women would inquire, whether from morbid curiosity, lingering romanticism, or those in similar straits hoping to sympathize. Whether he would ever relay falsified circumstances, Sansa knew they must be agreed upon beyond whatever he chose to scribble onto new papers. “Someone, some time, will ask,” she clarified, almost apologetically. “And fortune does not often smile upon the ill-prepared.” Her father. Her mother. The thousands of Jews gradually shuffled from freedom to rags and chains. Oh, how well she knew.
Sansa watched the battling shades of red, of orange, of purple at the end of his lit cigarette. What do you say? What would my mother do? What would my father’s advice be, caught between the dignity of an adult and the safekeeping of a child? Would I tell Arya to answer in the affirmative? Is it weakness or sagacity, agreeing to such demands in the interest of survival? No god, of the mother or the father’s faith, came down to offer divine guidance; nor did parents forcibly removed appear over her shoulder in comforting whisper. Sansa, then, was alone.
And she would live.
“I will attempt to clean my hair tonight,” she offered quietly, stare slanting from the contained inferno of addiction to the faintest mossy sheen hovering before plush chair. “If you do not object to showing me which washroom is mine to use, Herr Baelish.” A deal, struck.
“Even like this,” he replied, eyes centered on her face. There was no logic to the demand, no sense to be made of it other than the Officer’s own twisted, perverse sense of joy that came from making an animal jump through his hoops. “Especially like this,” he cautioned. “You must remember what you are, mustn’t you?” And what was that? A Pole? A Jew? A whore? At the mercy of a man who dangled her like some trinket, some momentary distraction that might be safety discarded at any moment if he were to change his mind. But such was life. Notions of fairness did not exist in a world where all rules had been broken and eroded under a mad man’s frantic musings. Power was everything to those who had it, and even more to those who didn’t. Were she a dog, a cow, a pig, she might have more rights than being what she was, and so Baelish’s offer was, indeed, a fair one. Fairer than most.
"Then go!” he waved her off towards some wing of the apartment. “Hot water. Soap. Ja, good, go. Get rid of that shade. Do not stain the tub.” A human life was to be preserved. An identity washed away like the dye of her hair. Yet all the man could concern himself with was the unsightly, mottled patches of dark her wash might dare to leave behind. It would be laughable, were it not so severely grim. A tub was worth more to him, to all of them, than her existence.
At her next inquiry, he stopped her, holding her with the sheer will of his silvery green eyes. Smoke languidly streamed in tendrillar pattern from his cigarette. A laugh began, no more than a rush of air expelled from his nostrils, before just as quickly dying. Such particular particulars she troubled over, but it was not the grappling excuses of a child or the dying; the Officer looked towards her and saw there a remarkable cleverness, seated just between worrying matters of insolence and pride.
"Mine,” he stated, blandly. “I can’t have anyone else sniffing around you. You will stay here. You are mine. Mon châtelaine,” he spoke in French, poorly, with a flourish of one hand as though trying to make the term whimsical. “My wartime wife.” A crooked smile appeared, briefly, before vanishing behind a curl of silvery smoke. “I have a wife, in Germany.” Why he shared the truth with her was not immediately apparent. His ring finger bore no band; though to be unadorned by jewelry of any sort was not uncommon among those of the military. “Her name is Lysa.” Petyr’s face seemed to twist with a measure of irritation, as if he hated the sound of that word, that name. “Tell them I liked your hair. That I accosted you.” Was it so simple? So plain and uncouth? No. There was no courting, no written letters of shy sentiments or romantic notions. A German expressed sexual interest in a Pole. And her partook of her. Such was the reality, cold and without intrigue. “Not that hair, though.” Again he gestured her off down a hallway.
"Go. Now. Get rid of it.”
Small furrows began to appear above her nose before Baelish’s laughter trailed away, smoothed in the wake of contemplative silence. “Yours,” she confirmed, attempting to sound more professional than relieved. As it was, in some ways, a role willfully assumed, Sansa could play the part of a Pole scrambling towards another dawn, another year. “Mon amour.” While tinted with the coarseness of her given tongue, French rolled more naturally from the girl - in spite of its dry tones. Wife. A station which could demand some measure of respect, despite its falsity; a word of the officer’s choosing, not hers, implying safety, security, even comfort. Not care. Never care. Though surrounded as she was by hopelessness, Sansa’s voice would not rise in protest of simple concealment repaid in errands tended or meals cooked.
“You must miss her a great deal,” she murmured, blue falling away to an ottoman leg. For a moment, Sansa wondered over what the woman looked like, how one even met a Nazi under normal circumstances, and why the sneer she could not see did not pass unheard in the hissed syllables of his wife’s name. Perhaps he only spoke of her as further proof of caustic disinterest - why fuck the girl before him, when a stunning German wife awaited his safe return. Another nod greeted the sparse background of courtship between them. “My hair. Your initiative,” she confirmed. “As you say.” It would serve, it would more than serve, considering the rare shade which normally tumbled over her shoulders, the cold precision of his manner.
No further words were required, and so nothing more was said as she turned and retreated to the hall. Steps past the stairs brought to sight a formal dining area, supposedly a kitchen nearby: she would find no washroom down here. The girl ascended, on steps well carpeted and silent, to a landing as blank as the walls which greeted her upon initial entry. Every door in sight was either fully shut, or eased nearly into its frame. Torn over the clear command to wash, and the fear that her actions might be construed as nosy, Sansa turned and crept to her right, toeing open doors as she went. Near to the end, she was rewarded with tiled floors and an ivory sink which winked in the dim light of the corridor; hastily shuffling inside, all but the thin layer of her cotton blouse discarded above her waist. A light switch, found in filtered light, flipped on; the door shut; a faucet handle marked ‘H’ turned open, then shut off just as quickly.
Don’t stain the tub. Staring down at the basin, a series of slow blinks concealing and revealing cerulean eyes, Sansa at last roused herself from contemplation to rummage in nearby cabinets. Within one, a tub of petroleum jelly lurked: a line of it had been smeared across her forehead, over her ears, when the dye was applied - why could the sink not be salvaged in the same manner? It certainly could not create an even larger mess. Coating ceramic in a layer of oily slime and bringing forth hot water a second time, the girl dared a pleased smile to see the barrier remain intact.
At first, she attempted to wet her hair bending backwards over the sink, in imitation of her lone trip to the salon Catelyn frequented: valleys in wash basins for one’s neck, cushioned seats, and massaging fingers along her scalp. Standing, however made the position impossible; facing the faucet, Sansa seized a plain bar of soap resting nearby and threw it into the water along with her bundle of sullied hair. The ends, thankfully, rinsed with some measure of ease. Water so hot it steamed, combined with scrubbing hands and suds, soon returned the first several inches to a gleaming copper. Flexibility, however, and the twinging disapproval of her scalp, kept much more than her roots stained.
Sansa tried turning, arching, dipping, all to no avail. Finally, resigned to helpless tears over a task unfulfilled - would he throw her to the wolves prowling abandoned streets? Present her to the ghetto himself, an opportunistic catch? Or simply drag her out to the nearest alley and press a barrel to her temple? - the girl slumped over the sink, let it take her weight where shoulders met the basin, when booted steps rang out in clipped echo down the hall, just outside the door.
“ – I…I can’t reach…parts,” she mumbled. “A-and your soap might be ruined…” He only mentioned the basin, Sansa reassured herself. “But its rinsing out…with some effort…”
Mon amour. Stolen affairs, lurid looks across the room, clumsy hands beneath her dress, breathless kisses, stifled moans. All of the things implied with but a phrase. My mistress. My love. Nothing so kindly etched in the mercurial gaze of a man – her savior. “Yes,” he stretched, silkily. “Very much.” It was with a cat-like grace that he extended his arm a second time to place the still-lit cigarette into the ashtray. Fingers laced coolly together in his lap. He said nothing else as she left, only watched her. Watched until she disappeared. Then he listened. Intently. For each stair being ascended, twelve in total, for each step, each door silently explored until the correct destination was found. Then silence. Water. Liquid sloshing through the pipes, working its way down to a fetid sewer bubbling far beneath their feet.
They were intimate sounds. Domestic sounds. Vague echoes of items being shuffled, cupboards being opened and closed, the constant drain and trickle of water. Baelish’s thoughts drifted to Catelyn as the cigarette smoldered, smoldered, until smoke ceased to curl upward and it rested cold and gray. The girl’s mother, her siblings, would be somewhere cold and gray; given no better treatment than that discarded luxury. Sansa would be with them, should have been with them. Instead, upstairs, washing the petulance from her hair. And what would Catelyn make of it? She would weep for her red daughter, he knew. She would beg him for mercy, as she no doubt begged someone else when they had separated her from the rest of her children. What was a friend? How many long, anonymous years had separated them from their amiable childhood and driven them to such vastly varying lives? It was not resentment that the Officer felt, nor was it remorse – it was pity. Pity for where she surely rested in suffering, pity for her daughter upstairs. Idly, Petyr wondered if Sansa was killing herself, drawing a blade across her flesh and bleeding beneath the warm water until she no longer had to think about it.
There was no urgency that carried him up the stairs. It might be droplets of crimson smeared or splashed to white tile – like blood on snow. Something beautiful in its disturbance; a snake swallowing a flower. It was not the fear of finding that which called him from the smoke-hazed den beneath. Too long, she was taking. Far too long. An hour, perhaps more. Long enough to die, to fall cold and lifeless to the floor against the soft, white noise of water swirling away.
But she wasn’t dead when the door was pushed open with two straight fingers. Far from it. Petyr looked first to the two-toned waif, then to the empty tub. The sink behind her was running. The counter was covered in bits of what looked to be gelatinous goo, and water. Water everywhere. Dripping over the edges, collecting on the floor, soaked into her thin shirt along with the dark, filthy stain of her hair.
“What are you doing?” he asked, tone cold as marble. “You can’t…reach?” Petyr blinked, slowly. “Perhaps it is because you are using the sink and not the tub. How do you expect—” A sheer, overwhelming feeling of fury welled up in his chest, stopping him. Oh, he had said not to stain the tub, is that right? Fool girl. Foul girl. Had he dared to think her clever? Slowly, quietly, Baelish stepped into the washroom, turning and shutting the door fully with a cold, ominous click. A long, deep breath filtered in, and out. To the tub he stepped, fingers twisting one of the handles until water began to pour into it. Baelish gestured sharply. “Holen Sie sich in.”
Were she capable of looking up from the basin, through the curtain of half-cleansed hair, Sansa would have witnessed her rescuer’s extreme sensitivity to cleanliness. What he saw as a veritable flood amounted to a few droplets about her feet, less than might accumulate with the splash of water following a shave; admittedly the sink’s interior gleamed with smears of lubricant, though easily swept away to leave it unstained. Not the spotless bathroom which she had entered, unfortunately, but a far cry from the insulting disaster which set lips to curl and forehead to crease.
"W-washing it…away…” Wringing her locks from soaking to damp once more, Sansa piled the object of fruitless attentions in a sloppy pile at her crown, straightening to a stand. Several moments removed from his revelatory look, the girl still managed to flinch upon catching sight of the office. “I thought the mess…would be smaller, I thought…I thought this would be easier.” Remembering the swift flow of hot water at her side, the sink was silenced without a glance away. Baelish seemed some mythical creature who must always be gazed at, lest he pounce.
Head swiveled and eyes squinted, attempting to reconnoiter whether the man already intended to renege on assurances of disinterest; anger alone swirled and coursed in celadon irises, providing terror-laced relief. “Fein,” she whispered, fishing the worn bar of soap from the sink and stalking past him to the tub’s edge. Toeing off her shoes, Sansa braced one hand on the lip and clambered into the deep basin still clothed. Sex may not enter his thoughts…but she had no intentions of tempting the matter further. “Ich habe nur versucht zu tun, was Sie fragen.”
Slipping along the damp base, hair was situated under the gushing stream, body extended with shoulders in an awkward lift away from the drain. Muscles burned in protest when two soaped hands worked together at her scalp, yet the water flowed away predominantly clean when only one scrubbed while the other pressed down in support. Frustrated, tired, and more than slightly scared of her company - unaware of his reaction, with stare firmly fixed to the ceiling directly above - Sansa quickly stopped her restorative efforts to slump a second time in defeat. “I need your help,” she admitted lowly to Baelish’s chest. “I had help dying it, I shall need it cleaning it as well.”
Petyr Baelish had certain proclivities. Towards meticulousness. Towards cleanliness. As Sansa would no doubt come to observe. Her first lesson was not untimely, though it was unfortunate. The smears of water, each tiny droplet catching the light and making itself known to Baelish as though it were as large and obvious as a red flag whipping before his face, taunting him, angering him, infusing him with a very bitter sort of displeasure. With no maid here to immediately clean the mess, the burden would, inevitably, fall to Sansa. Yet she knew not of his preferences, of the particulars, of his predisposition towards certain practices. How the towels need be folded, which soaps need be used. A hundred hundred tiny, superfluous rules which abounded in the wake of a man who was where he was because of his propensity for numbers, for calculations. For the precise.
”Habe ich dir die Erlaubnis Deutsch zu sprechen?“ he snapped, once she was ensconced in the porcelain basin. "How soon you forget, liebling. Let us hope you do not forget other things so easily.” Your life depends on it.
Baelish watched with mercurial eyes. Watched as she bent over. Watched as her shoulder-blades jutted out against her shirt, looking like wings ready to sprout from her body and carry her far, far away. Watched as her hair fell beneath the stream of clear water and bleed through it a darker brown. It looked like blood. Like old, thick blood swirling down the drain. The bar of soap was smeared with that same color. There was a vague, grim sort of interest, fascination, in watching the gross incompetency of a girl utterly incapable of meeting her own needs. It was not hard to see she was having difficulties reaching near the back, towards the roots. The way her limbs would crane back, slender, willowy, only to grapple with the foe of blindness. An exercise in futility. When she meekly turned to look at him, to beseech with limp, soggy locks and a dripping chin, he already knew what she was going to ask.
One step forward brought him to the edge of the tub, where he looked down. Not at her, but at the water, at the open drain, swallowing it all like an eager silver mouth. When he glanced to her, to the stained bar of soap, a sharp breath of discontent left him. Although tempted to wait for his maid to help, he knew that would be a poor decision. There would be no reason for him to have wanted to dye his whore’s hair, only to instantly wash it away. Petyr held out his hand, and took from Sansa the soap. It was slippery, filmy, greasy. With a nod he bid her to return beneath the warm flow of water.
Baelish reached forward just enough to wet his hands, before soaping them up, creating a thick lather of suds and moving them to Sansa’s head. He scrubbed. Firmly, but not ungently. She would be able to feel his fingers sliding along her scalp, his thumbs working in small circles. Were she able to see his face she would see nothing save for an unsavory sneer, as though the man were wrist-deep in sewer refuse rather than scrubbing brown die out of a girl’s hair. Gentle pressure at the base of her neck told her he was ready to have her rinse. A suffusion of brown swirled away. This process was repeated three times, four times, until the wet mop on her head was more red than brown, and then all red. A lovely red. Shame it was, though, that the Officer had no mind to appreciate the comely hue. Baelish rinsed his hands before silencing the flow of water.
“There. Good enough.” His footsteps carried him away from the tub, fetching a neatly folded towel, fluffy white, from a ground-level cupboard. Then another. One was handed off to the tub-ridden girl, the other was used to start wiping away roughly at his hands. Arguably, she could have used both of them. Every article of clothing that she wore was soaked through and through. Even a cursory glance would have revealed through the thin white cotton her budding breasts, but Baelish was paying no attention to her. Drawing his fingers near to his face, the man carefully examined them. Under his nails, stained along the cuticle line, everything was brown. The dye had slithered in like a snake, taking root, discoloring his perfectly manicured fingers as though he were mere rabble. The flavor of disgust washed over his tongue; a twinge of angry resentment shot through him. It would be tempting to take personal umbrage at the girl, for it was her hair which had caused the mess, her inability to groom herself.
“Well?” he said, finally looking at her. “Do you intend to drain all evening or do you need help drying yourself as well?”
Thinking her plea for assistance would garner chivalrous aid, Sansa felt the expression of hope, of welcoming, of submission fall away to the more rigid lines of indignation. Had he meant an explicit offer: Speak German, now? Clearly not the subtle invitation extended by addressing her in his mother tongue; for why should Baelish lower himself to a Polish growl, after the girl had demonstrated some proficiency in shifting between the two. “Nein,” she glowered, another huff of irritation - directed towards herself as much as the officer - flaring her nostrils. “No. And I won’t forget.” Your little Polish whore. A foul thing to swallow, even as the rabbit drew comfortable breath before the fox.
“Please?” she repeated, in her own tongue, though already Baelish had reached for the proffered soap; hands rinsed free of slimy residue, then braced alongside her thighs as Sansa curled back beneath the faucet. Hearing the lather, the small noises made by one unimpressed with a duty imposed, copper lashes squeezed shut when he shifted beside the tub, as much in fear of his wrath as she was errant streams of burning soap. A flinch of shoulder, however, proved misplaced. Though not a mother’s soft caress - far too light for the task at hand, in any case - his nails did not claw, his fingers did not tangle, his hands did not pull; pushing up as he pushed down, the girl met Petyr’s scouring with as much assistance as she could muster.
Through it all, blue remained hidden, frightened of what might greet her sight opposite the shocking tactile care. Were she able to forget precisely why she sat, half-clothed and dripping, in a Nazi’s bathroom, Sansa might have savored the feeling of another’s touch; it was not until such had been forgone for weeks, only to be experienced again, that she knew of its comforting necessity. Yet forget she could not, neither the man nor the task nor the ruse. Following each silent directive, each adjustment without complaint, Sansa did not struggle to sit until the stream ceased and clipped steps carried her assistant away.
Truthfully, the towel frightened her in a way Baelish could not. Oh, it was his doing that she eyed pristine cotton fibers with wary eye, though where in the German she perceived the faint traces of an ally, the cloth signified a vile challenge. The sink, the floor, the bathtub: all sullied to some degree, soon to be joined by one of his linens, lest she instead remain shivering in the basin until dawn. Draping it over the tub’s edge, Sansa first rang out her hair until no water, predominantly clear, ran from its ends. Only then did she dare reclaim the towel.
Painfully aware of how she must look, the girl could only dab at her exposed limbs as she stood, pat at restored locks, and clutch cushioned white beneath her chin as ineffectual shield from the cold and his scrutiny. “No.” Another shameful shake of head. “ – I…I haven’t anything else to wear.” Obviously. And her inclination to strip before the current audience was minimal. “Besides, I should – clean my mess,” she offered, “before anyone else should question it.” The arrival of a strange girl, coinciding with the strange havoc of his bath? No. That simply would not do. Without reaching or asking for Baelish’s hand, she brought herself awkwardly back to the tiled floor.
“ —– And…I am sorry, for your hands.” Scared she might be, but Sansa was not oblivious. The towel wedged up tighter beneath her chin. “I won’t cause such trouble again, not after tonight, I swear it…” As she oughtn’t, lest they both suffer from an unfortunate discovery of his peers.
Of course such simple solutions as spare clothing and the question of what to do with her had evaded his consideration whilst greater matters of her immediate safety had been conquered. First there was a spark of realization, and then a frown. Deep and without promise even in his contemplative silence. “Ja,” he surrendered. “I don’t keep women’s clothes.” For all of the pieces of stolen furniture and trifles decorating the commandeered flat, the closets had all been emptied. Furs and gowns and jewels the man had no use or want for – sent away to be pilfered by someone with a greater mind for such things. Procuring a collection of clothing for her would be no difficulty, but it would not happen before the sun rose.
“You’ll have to make do.” Whether he expected her to sleep in wet clothing or in no clothing at all he didn’t expand on. Allowing the girl to wear his own clothing was out of the question, and, in his mind, somehow infinitely most inappropriate than having her slide nude and entirely concealed between a pair of sheets. Baelish watched with little interest as she rose from the empty basin and stepped lithe to the floor. For half a second, his eyes lingered on her bare feet, on the sheen of water which surrounded them, before sweeping upward to survey the wet mess of his washroom.
Sansa’s fears over the offering of a towel were not unfounded. The way the Officer’s gaze darkened and his mouth thinned as the scene was taken in, chewed, swallowed, digested was quite telling. There was no reason to hide his discontent from her. Not from her. A street waif. A Jew. A captive. Creator of all foul things in the world, slayer of society. “Ja, you should.” The agreement was cold and without empathy. For how could she clean? Each step would yield more and more soggy droplets splashing to the floor wrought from sodden clothes and hair. Every time another crystal tear of water fell from her person to the small puddles collecting at her feet, it wound the man tighter, plucking new notes out of tune and forcing his teeth into an ungainly grind.
At her apology, Baelish’s gaze snapped to her. There was an unsettling intensity to green irises which had not been there before. As if every regret or hesitation the man had felt at taking her in manifested in the verdant hues normally muted by a more calming gray. “Are you?” he asked, silkily, mouth suddenly breaking into a smile. Briefly, his eyes flicked to stained digits. “Trifles.” The way his hands curved and fluttered with emphasizing gesture was surprisingly elegant, as if the motion had been practiced a thousand thousand times before.
“Best you get to sleep, liebling.” A dismissive wave was given to the washroom. “I will tend to it. To this. You are a guest, aren’t you?” The way he said it, however, spoke entirely to the falsehood of the statement. “The first room on the right. Have it as yours.”
Make do. What else had the Starks, the entire Jewish race, done since that first boot rang out its clipped steps along the cobbled streets of Europe? She had eaten stale, unseasoned food, worn clothing past the time youthful spurts of growth demanded its retirement, and meekly donned that celestial armband as a sign of her inferiority. Unlike her counterparts hovering fearfully behind high walls, Sansa had not suffered; not so much as them, at least. True the loss of first a father, then the rest of her kin would echo across the years, but in compare to so many others she had kept her health, her life.
The Germans compared her ilk to vermin, oily sewer rats skittering about and soiling the streets of Paradise. Sansa might better be likened to a weed, prickly and enduring, wedged deep within the cracks they so desired to uproot her from. Refusing all attempts at displacement, resolutely regenerating what leaves and stalks were so callously torn away in anger. Weeds lacked both pride and beauty, according to any conscientious gardener, yet such faults did not prevent their enduring survival, as the girl so desperately fought for now.
"I will,” she promised in soft tones, gradually pulling the towel tighter about her clothed bosom. Though worn, the garments did not amount to rags; given a chair back or wooden rack, they might be dried and worn again as he sought to clothe her in more becoming articles. Baelish’s physical displeasure may have readily concealed itself in subtle tension and the masked working of molars over one another, yet from his person a rolling boil of fury tumbled out upon the girl. Shoulders hunched and neck bowed, the weed drooping beneath the shadow of an oppressor’s heel. I hate this. But Sansa was too tired, too drained of the necessary vigor to compare the loss of dignity with the loss of life. Instead she forged her features into contrite sincerity, nodding her determined apology.
“I meant to do it on my own. To – to spare you the trouble…” As though housing one her kind presented no trouble at all. Sansa, however, recognized the dismissal when given, no matter how little she believed it. “No,” she corrected, loosening the towel, tucking her hair beneath it to catch the drips, and refastening it more tightly about herself, “I am your whore.” Chin lifted with what semblance of self-respect remained to her, Sansa edged past her false lover, repairing herself to the promised room. Well furnished, yet possessed of the same glaring absences his front hall boasted, it had clearly served as a room for one of the family rather than transient guests.
Some minutes were spent wringing and dabbing at her hair, ivory cotton remaining blessedly unstained. The washing, then, had served them well. When the time came to dry the rest of her body. Sansa paused. While he had exhibited no obvious signs of interest, nor subjected her to any leering stares, the lie Baelish offered up as explanation for her presence drew cerulean eyes towards the shut and unsecured door. Laughter met her fear that the relationship be mimicked in their private rooms, intimately, but Sansa placed more faith in human nature than any outward show of disdain.
She locked the door before undressing. Each layer was also thoughtfully patted with the towel, then draped over the wooden chair of a small writing desk in one corner, hung from hooks beside the door to slowly dry. Better to sleep in damp hair alone, than sheathed in chilled clothes; such was her logic as Sansa at last slid between sheets still crisp from their last washing, and drifting into unconsciousness.
No dreams came, only darkness.
It was shouting, very real and very near, which awoke her the following morning. Through the sturdy wood she could hear furious German broken in pauses by, in the same voice, a slow, condescending enunciation of Polish. Rarely, for only a syllable or two, a woman’s voice interjected with the same tongue. Had it been two men, she might have feared discovery, but it seemed Baelish was not speaking to any soldier or superior. Perhaps the maid he mentioned the evening prior. Slipping, bedraggled, to her feet, dragging the top sheet along and knotting it below her collarbone, Sansa fumbled towards the door and unlatched it. Opening it just a crack, one hand working at the delicate crust of sleep in one eye, then the other, she peered out onto the upstairs hall. Ebon and silver could be seen silhouetted at the doorway of the washroom she had ravaged a few hours prior. From there Baelish’s voice continued to rise; though Sansa could not make out the words through her haze of sleep, his anger remained unmistakable.
A weed, by definition, was only a plant that was considered by someone to be undesirable. Even typically termed flora such as sowthistle or purslane could be coveted by those with a certain taste. No German with their aesthete sense of pride would ever find beauty in such common plants, with their wormy sense of survival, willing and able to thrive even in the filthy conduits of putrid peat and unharvestable refuse. If Sansa was a weed, and certainly she must be – a creature most undesirable – then she was a poppy. Red, and red, and red. Deceptive in her amaranthine beauty, her perfect symmetry; she was everything the Jew as an entity was not. Deserving of being plucked from the garden it so callously overran, to be replanted, nourished, given new root in soil far purer.
A pause, to behold his red weed, as she wove clever sentiments together which made the man think – perhaps, after all, she would not bring about his ruin.
I am your whore.
Their eyes met in that sliver of space before she uprooted and left, a likeness of pride threshing about her pale face. Most misplaced.
Petyr tended to the mess of the girl who had not the foresight to clean as she went. Errant droplets wiped and soaked away, every last unsightly streak eradicated. Save for the circles of color ringing the tub’s drain. A dark, mottled stain of dirt-brown, unmistakably not the creeping insistence of rust. Permanent remnants of his ward’s mistake, her foolish decision to conceal fiery tendrils in favor of dull mud. No amount of scrubbing would remove them; even long after the layers of skin on his fingers had shed the same stain, the rings in the tub remained, mocking him, leering, taunting.
All night it taunted him, where sleep might have reigned. An unnerving nag prodding him, with bony fingers, in the side, in the spine, a sharp tension in his neck. When Anja arrived in the morning, a near-silent sweep through the house, more spirit than person, awaiting her were no genial pleasantries. It took not long at all for instructions to purge the stain to escalate into loud threats as to what would happen if she did not. The poor girl’s eyes were affixed to Nazi boots, fingers a furtive curl into the pristine white of a cleaning rag. Only when Sansa’s door opened did her gaze shift, and widened, as if in shocked discovery of another person being present. Baelish looked, too. Sudden stoicism overtook him. It was not shame. Had he forgotten she was there? The reminder of her, his weed, swathed in sheets, bedraggled like a proper whore might be. Petyr’s face was etched with barely-concealed fury. No word in Polish or German heralded his exit.
The home void the German officer was silent, save for the quiet weeping of a Polish girl spurred by fear, by a desperate frustration that no matter how hard she scrubbed, how much the lye burned her hands, her eyes, her lungs, the stains remained.
The weeping silenced itself the instant the door opened. The sky was already darkening. Anja had stayed far, far past her normal hours, fearful of leaving the mess which the German had been so explicit in his demands for its removal. The scent of lye permeated the home; it was the first destination for Baelish after the heavy, dark jacket was carefully hung. Sansa would be able to hear low tones filtering out of the washroom. Indiscernible words or reprimands. Anja made not a sound, until it was that her lighter feet carried her down the stairs to collect her worn coat; Sansa was spared not a glance before she left. A few minutes later, it was the heavier, surer steps of Baelish. Down the stairs, rounding the corner, finding Sansa in the asylum of the sitting room.
“Was it a nice day, fräulein?” A too-pleasant smile blossomed on his features. “Nothing amiss? Everything to your liking?” He stepped slowly into the room, resting a hand to the back of a chair. “Tell me – what did you do all day?”
A face, an arm, five toes, and the smallest sliver of ivory linen: all that Sansa unveiled beyond the threshold of her new domicile , peeking out at the commotion. Her instructions of the night previous never included hiding, not from a housekeeper who would learn of the girl’s presence withing short order of the morning rounds. Where Anja trembled and wept, however, the Officer’s newest charge held still: a woodland creature, half-sighted in a thicket. Assuming neither invitation nor dismissal, only once the front door shut with an authoritative snap did she sweep back into her room, granting Baelish’s maid but the most frightened twitch of lashes in greeting.
He had told her nothing else of his expectations, where she might go or what she was allowed to do. No pile of clothes sat in a heap outside her door, and his stare communicated no intentions of their immediate procurement. Thankfully, at least, what Sansa brought with her had dried an acceptable amount whilst she slept. Worried the poor girl’s grief might turn to anger - certainly her master had not ruined the porcelain basin - the little Stark girl remained curled in bed until noon approached. Then Anja’s tears stopped so long as it took to knock quietly, calling through the lacquered wood that Herr Baelish’s ice box was kept well supplied, should the fräulein desire any food. Only after the bristly rasp of cleaning resumed did she cast off her sheet, dress, and plait her hair for the absence of a brush.
Afterwards, Sansa could not have said what exactly her expectations of the pantry had been, though the reality far exceeded a picture painted in the oils of rationing and shortages. Instead it was bread, fresh from the bakery, produce sitting pertly upon the counters, meats and cheeses kept cool beside several stoppered bottles of beer. Even half a roast - a roast! - hidden beneath a cheesecloth, plainly sliced away at for sandwiches. Such bounty. Not dissimilar to the flippant consumption of tobacco the Officer allowed himself, though she suspected every grape, each wedge of cheese was accounted for lest an unfortunate servant think to pilfer from his harvest.
A sandwich of leftover beef and hard cheese, bitter mustard smeared on the bread, and an apple quieted her protesting stomach. Meager fare, average fare, yet so much more than the watery broths and stale rolls others used to keep themselves until the next rations call. Upstairs, the noises of despair and frustration continued; Sansa thought to take her a plate, before realizing the political undercurrent of such a gesture. She settled for a meticulous cleaning of what mess was made, brushing every surface clean of her presence.
Then: exploration. Tentative and narrow, not even trying at closed doors that may or may not be barred against entrance. Kitchen, formal dining room, both a front parlor and more casual den to the home’s rear, masculine enough in decoration that at one time it might have served as a study. Library, small washroom, and a scattering of closets mostly empty. Rather than reascend the stairs, separate herself from frantic efforts with but a wall, Sansa remained on the ground floor. The sitting room called to her above all, devoid of anything in which she might meddle. It was there the girl remained, watching through lacy curtains as the sun fell from its zenith to kiss distant rooftops. Cobblestones rang beneath boots, laborers returning home before the encroaching dark, then fell quiet once more. When Baelish returned, she said not a word, though neither did Sansa shrink away from his footsteps. He would find her soon enough.
And find his whore the man did, with an amiable disposition that sent worms oozing down her back. Anja had not performed as admirably as could be hoped: the walls were thin enough for Sansa to discern so much as that. "Quiet,” she lied, preserving what dignity the maid had remaining to her. Lips pulled up into a brittle smile; her tongue flicked out, forcing them to soften. “ – I…I helped myself to lunch. Nothing much, and I cleaned the kitchen,” came her swift promise. “Otherwise, I just…I just wandered. I’m hardly fit to walk the streets.” With a nervous chortle, both at her appearance and the assumption that she might come and go so soon, Sansa brushed over her secondhand blouse. “And…yours?” What did he even do? “I trust it was…” Nothing in a Nazi’s duties could be met with pleasant tidings in her mind. Blue drifted towards a distant wall, papered over with small fronds and blossoms. “ – As it should be.”
For all Sansa knew of it Baelish had asked his house waif to watch Sansa, to keep track of her every movement. Lying, then, would be out of the question. There were no expectations to hear an exhaustive recounting of every motion to and fro, the food she had ate or the liquids she had drank, how many times she had used the restroom, how late she had slept, whether or not she had broken down into tears with the overwhelming magnitude of the situation she had been profoundly lucky enough to stumble into.
“Did you?” Baelish sounded surprisingly interested. “You shouldn’t. Clean, that is. That is not your duty here. Do nothing except what you are expected to.” Whores lifted not a finger save to fuck. Their sense of entitlement was, perhaps, not particularly well-earned yet it was there all the same. Most of them had leverage at least in the barest forms of holding their intimate liaisons over men with wives, though to even hint that they intended to breathe a word of it would result only in grave misfortune for them. There were unspoken agreements. Unspoken rules. The chair was rounded and the Officer took a seat.
"If you do things that are not expected of you then you will be accountable for them.” Elbows propped to the chair’s rests. Long, elegant fingers came to form a delicate steeple before him. “Like those rings in the tub.” Gray eyes, hard in their resolve, surrounded by an otherwise genial countenance, were unnerving. “They are a maid’s problem. It is their job to clean, ja?” Both brows lifted in emphasis. “But if you insist on cleaning as well – then who is to blame for their lack of removal?” A frog smile curled his mouth.
There was a long moment of silence in which it was not clear whether he expected her to speak, or to remain quiet and contrite.
"You will have to wait another day or so for a change in clothing. For that you have my apology; I take no pleasure in your discomfort.” The steeple crumbled away, hands falling to rest at their rightful posts. “I will procure papers for you, but until then you mustn’t be seen by anyone.” The aforementioned maid clearly excepted.
And so it went.
卍
March 1941
Krakow, Poland
Baelish was gone most days, and didn’t not often return before the sun was on a downward trek to the horizon. On the days he did not leave for duty, some were spent sleeping, others working behind a locked door whose only key seemed to remain on his person at all times. Anja barely spoke to Sansa, though what few words were spared were kind. Baelish seemed to speak even less. Oh, but certainly that wasn’t true, for he appeared to make a concerted effort to engage her verbally each time he had the opportunity, though what words came out were common cordialities of little substance. After a month, Sansa knew as much about her host as she had the evening he had taken her in.
As promised, he had provided for her a wardrobe, which became rather sizable in short order. Though it was never explicitly stated where the clothing was coming from, it was not difficult to guess. All suspicions were, one evening, confirmed when a yellow star had mistakenly remained intact upon one of the garments.
“It was my mother’s name,” he said to her one night, handing her a small, neatly folded set of documents. Papers erasing Sansa Stark as a person and replacing her instead with a woman named Alayne Stone. A new life. A new identity. With it, the ability to leave the house which had functioned as both a sanctuary and a prison – providing her with safety and respite while sheltering her from the outside world.
“It suits you, I think.” Baelish was rubbing his chin, thoughtfully, looking her over with more scrutiny than he had in a long time. “Do you like it?” As though her name were a gift.
And wasn’t it?
Since Poland first saw the advance of invader’s boots, certainly by the time one parent and then the other vanished alongside all her other family, Sansa had divorced the impulses of heart from the measured consideration of thought. The former swelled gratefully, a vestige of the schoolgirl eager to please, eager to impress, as honeyed tones washed over her. Then, just as swiftly, firm reminder of her proper place; what ought to have settled the girl instead set ivory teeth on edge, partial smile turned gritty at Baelish’s casual instruction.
Feet, bare, shuffled along the varnished floor, granting him a wide berth in which to circle and take his seat. Sheltered her entire life, Sansa had not the faintest concept of how a whore would or would not behave. Dress lewdly with an excess of cosmetics? Perhaps, if only she possessed the resources to do either. Exude a comfort with her body, and that of her partner? Certainly, though with no one to witness the charade it seemed more than hollow. What else did such women do? The Officer had given her a title, agreed to the vaguest of stories, and marched away. Fearing how unappreciated an imagination might be, she attempted no embellishment, no elaboration beyond what she knew to be true.
With a slow blink, blue eyes found the floor, hands clasped contritely between her hips. “I did not want you to come home to a mess. And with Anja – ” Again the girl cut herself off. If the woman was not clever enough to conceal her distress, make up for what other work had gone unfinished, Sansa could not save her. Neither would she condemn her though, with the blame of troublesome stains residing entirely with her. “I won’t…insist on anything, in the future.” The notion abraded years of conditioning, Stark children tending to their own chores between a maid’s weekly visits. Crumbs on the counter? Clothes on the floor? Sloppiness never allowed to the girl.
Daring to lift her gaze, Sansa neither flinched nor blinked at the raptorial stare; her jaw, however, did work in a brief, subtle grinding that seemed to be meant as fortification. Baelish dismissed any perceived desire to see her put out: as likely a reassurance as his idea of a sick joke. The girl only nodded. “I will stay here,” she promised. “Quietly.”
And so she did.
❃
March 1941
Krakow, Poland
In the ensuing days, Sansa neither questioned nor commented on her host’s schedule. At times his rustling down the hall awoke her, other mornings she dozed through any clack of heel or flap of cloth. True to her word, the girl made no more effort to clear away messes, to ease burden of duty put upon Baelish’s housekeeper. Still neater, perhaps, than a common prostitute, as the blase leisure associated with a lifetime of knowing someone trailed just behind oneself came slowly to her. The library proved most welcoming in idle hours - and windowless. Overcautious, Sansa spent little time in rooms which overlooked the street; her bedroom curtains remained drawn, as did those in the dining room where she took her lunches. A need for caution did not go unacknowledged in her conduct, moving as a ghost during the Officer’s absence.
An empty closet, barren drawers, all filled at a slow, inexorable pace. Blouses, skirts, trousers, dresses, shoes, and all manner of underthings and night clothes; nothing threadbare, everything of an adequate size. So many girls, Polish, Jewish: she tried to think nothing of it, until the star. A mistake? A reminder? Each stitch was carefully removed, before Sansa requisitioned one of his matches and burned the marker in her bathroom sink.
Dinners remained a quiet affair, she incapable of performing any activity worthy of note, he, well…Sansa held steadfast to empty pleasantries, nothing more. That night, plates pushed aside for glasses of water or wine to sit centered, trembling fingers took hold of the proffered papers, meticulously creased. Red muscle, pumping steadily behind its bony cage, contracted, seized by a sensation of death. She could not keep the name bestowed by mother and father; objectively, Sansa knew as much. But to see herself, so many years, however short, reduced to less than memory shook the girl.
“Beautiful. It’s beautiful, thank you.” Alayne Stone. Not as alliteratively pleasant, though possessed of a certain flow. It would do, just as the garments had. “No one…knows, do they?” Consummate record-keepers, Baelish and his ilk. Somewhere, buried in one file or another, his mother’s name must linger. Buried in a Berlin repository, those few keystrokes could do no harm. But if the men in his company here, in Krakow, knew…suffice to say, the likelihood of a whore bearing the same name as his mother was low.
Refolding them, tucking the heavy paper beneath one thigh, Sansa laced her fingers together atop the table. Fear, uncertainty - respect, as well, for powers the man wielded - lingered in eyes given by the mother. Blue had darkened in her time beneath the Nazi’s roof, though it lost none of its luster. “Does this…this means I’m able to leave, correct? When you’re gone?” To see the sun, not filtered by glass and shade, would make her feel human once more.
“Knows what?” he asked, in a way where it could not be certain whether he was testing her or if the question wasn’t rhetorical. With some mercy, he continued shortly thereafter. “No. No one knows.” If Sansa believed he had handed to her an updated copy of his mother’s records, she was sorely mistaken. A name was copied, a first name, but far from anything else. To even suggest that Baelish would sully his mother’s legacy in such a manner would be sin. Wise it was, then, that Sansa had elected not to share her thoughts. Baelish had constructed a fantasy on paper – no more. Not a single letter stamped by metallic typewriter finger contained any truth. Sansa was a lie. A skillfully crafted one, no doubt, but a lie all the same. Ready to be dissolved into smoke with one passing breath of truth.
“Eager to escape, are you?” Baelish sipped dark red velvet, a passingly wry smile alight on his features. If he was truly concerned by the idea he did not let on. With as much time Sansa had spent alone, she might have fled a hundred times were that her goal. And what did Petyr care if she did? What he provided her with was life. Should she wish to cast it aside it would be her decision, and no longer an unsightly stain besmirching his conscience.
”Ja. As you wish.” A nonchalant hand was waved towards her, as though he meant to dismiss her then and there. “But…” Always a caveat. “If you do something stupid, I will not come for you.” The way he said that word, stupid, was filled with venom. Did he expect her to act amiss? To flee the stone stairs of the upscale apartment and run amok in the streets of Krakow? The way he spoke the words made it seem as though he did. More likely he expected her to have some pressing, obligating feelings of nostalgia which might lead her to investigate her old home, or even drift near to the ghetto with the backwards hope of glimpsing some familiar faces as they swayed in or out of the iron gates. A little red bird flying to locales where she ought not be would only draw attention. Baelish was unwilling to stand for her. It was only fair that he told her so.
“And you will begin sleeping in my room.” A casual afterthought to be had as the remaining droplets of wine were downed. Was there a differentiation to be had between room and bed? “You’re not a house guest. If it is to be known you are staying with me then you must properly act the part.” To what extent? Did he mean for her to share his bed, or would he go so far as to expect her to warm it? All questions left unanswered as the man rose from the table, one hand a graceful sweep down the front of impeccable black wool. “It was a mistake not to do it from the beginning. God only knows what Anja thinks…” There Baelish’s gaze grew narrow in some silent, malicious thought about his house-waif and her insufferable notion to gossip as all women were wont to do. Perhaps he would be made to dispose of her. What did she think of Baelish’s sudden charge, who slept in another room and kept to herself? Certainly she was showered with gifts that amounted to her being a whore, a kept woman, but not once had Anja witnessed the auburn-haired girl wandering to or from the Obersturmführer’s private bedroom.
“Starting tonight.” There was only the ominous footsteps of Baelish’s booted feet leaving the room, taking the path up the stairs to his room.
Could he tell, how her half-sullied blood caught chill at rhetorical questioning? Did it show in her eyes, her face, the creeping frost of worry that this misstep would cost all? Sansa almost apologized for impertinence — though despite all notions of superiority, they did have to work in tandem — when the Officer dismissed growing tension. Alayne. Alayne. Ah-lahyne. She rolled it along her mind’s tongue, memorizing Baelish’s cadence, the slide of consonants and vowels until confidence began to take hold. Papers were more valuable than any bill or coin now, a person’s worth measured and weighed in their blood; while far from able to move and act with impunity, the girl could at least seek out the sun with little to fear, open the front room’s curtains or stroll the city’s market in a dead woman’s dress. Not much, the dreams of a pauper, yet far more than any other girl of her circumstance could hope for.
“No,” she promised, mirroring the brief sampling of carmine vintage. Her parents hardly let the older children drink: a sip of wine when Sansa took communion with the mother, half a flute of fizzing, fermented grapes at parties before being shooed away to bed. It felt criminal now, when so many voices cried out for a moldy crust of bread, watching the Obersturmführer burn through one cigarette after another, uncorking bottles of fine wine for dinners created out of a larder filled with fresh meats and cheeses, unwilted produce, the sort of ingredients no longer in existence for many cities and nations. She might be unable to leave such excess, though self-interested lingering hardly implied approval. Only tolerance.
Reprimand prior to wrongdoing, however, creased auburn brows with affront. “I won’t.” Sansa wanted to breathe fresh air, drink a cup of tea at one of the rare sidewalk cafes still maintained, bring back a bouquet of tulips or roses to display in the drab and colorless front hall. Not seek out old friends — all removed from her reach regardless — or burn Hitler’s cursed insignia in the city square. “I just…want to…” Sansa took another gulp of wine rather than finish. She couldn’t finish. She wanted, in the way any prisoner lusted for verdant tendrils of grass, pinpricks of stars in the velveteen night sky, the burst of fresh-picked berries on the palate. Specificity eluded her; Sansa wanted.
The glass stuttered as she made to set it down, wobbling under the guidance of an unsteady hand at Baelish’s blasè decree. “ —— Sleeping…?!” Taking a moment to regain composure, ensure no ruby droplets had spilled onto her host’s impeccable snowy tablecloth, Sansa snatched the remaining napkin beside her cleared setting and dabbed at one lip. Sharing a roof turned her stomach enough, professed gratitude or no; sharing a bed, in whatever meaning of the phrase, threatened to summon bile. Would his flesh not scorch upon touching her own ivory expanse? Did he not barely swallow repugnance at the though of harboring a half-breed under his roof, no matter the shade of her hair or curve of her lips?
“ ——— Herr Baelish…,” Sansa began in desperate negotiation, yet the words bounced harmlessly off thick black wool, consumed by the growing space between them. She sat at the table, aimlessly swirling the dregs of her wine, until the small, pattering noises of ready-making trailed off into silence. Then she too ascended the stairs, stopping to scrub at face and teeth in the same hall bath in which Petyr liberated auburn locks from their horrendous dye. In her room, Sansa set long hair in a braid for sleeping. Her fingers only trembled a little. Did the Officer sleep in pajamas? Boxers? Nude? No matter, for she donned an ankle-length sleeping shift cut from soft, dove-grey cotton. Its sleeves belled out until buttoning at the wrist, while its collared neck was held together with a delicate both; at the small of her back, a second tie cinched her waist, the only concession to sartorial flattery. Though far from frumpy, the gown was hardly meant to incite.
She knocked on his door before entering, timid. Petyr didn’t want to share space with her, lie awake into the night touching and talking and learning of one another. It was a farce, the entire arrangement, Sansa reminded herself; respecting what natural boundaries she could would enforce that, in private. Into the space she stepped, barefoot and with downcast gaze. “My stipulation remains.” Unlike the digits which plaited auburn hairs, her voice rang clear and steady. “Nothing will make me touch you. Nothing.” Baelish was not the only one in that room who thought of his company as vermin.
