That same expectation she felt just then, wallowing in the mire of unvoiced agreements, contracts signed in blood and sheer resolve – it would crush her, eventually. She would languish away under the weight of it, or she would burst free and destroy every last notion of it. Only time would tell. Baelish privately hoped he might be Sansa’s Lysa. What grim poetry, what absurdly perfect happenstance; he’d teach her how to hone that violence she felt and knew not what to do with, then he’d sink into it when it became too much.
Did Sansa believe Petyr to be in distress? Perhaps he was. Perhaps that decorous display of unwashed glasses and rumpled clothing spoke to some sort of hurt inside the man, though he would almost certainly not admit to it, and never to her. More likely, however, was that it spoke simply to a pattern. How well did Sansa know Petyr? Really know him? Every conception of him was formulated on a basis that she was allowed some sort of intimate glimpse into his life, but did she have any solid evidence to substantiate such a hefty claim? Oh…yes. He’d saved her. He’d saved her where he’d saved no one else. Intervening first with her very life, and then whatever notion of her chastity still existed. Something about her drove Petyr to action; such profound intervention from a man who had for many years done little more than idly spectate spoke greater volumes than any warbled declaration of devotion ever could.
The look in his eyes when she rose from the couch in agreement, that spoke volumes too. Petyr’s practiced persona, keenly sculpted, refined smile, immaculate body language – it always left a deadened void to be found in those eyes of green and gray. Now, watching her step towards him, there was something almost predatory. It was so easy, so easy, Sansa did not even make Petyr work for it, and this placed her fundamentally on a level far beneath him, putting her at an inherent disadvantage to each and every of their encounters. Mutual satisfaction had long been an unspoken pact, but to what end? Under whose terms? It was Sansa who flitted time and again to land at his stoop in blatant solicitation; it was Sansa who more often than not initiated any interaction between them, sexual or otherwise; it was Sansa who sought to repair whatever torn ligaments and nerves had been shred and snipped by the Capitol’s greedy wiles.
It was Petyr who looked at her as though she were a lone fawn wandering into the den of a hungry wolf. It was a hungry look, an insidious look, somehow both subtle and unspeakably vulgar at the same time. Her hand, smaller but far from tentative, slipped into his, preparing to guide him, guide him, up the stairs, as though it were suddenly she who stood in control. Petyr found this amusing; a smirk flickered across his mouth. Each time she looked back, drawing him nearer, his eyes were on hers, dark, shadows of drink and sleeplessness lurking at the planes beneath his eyes. There were no indecent looks down her form, no lingering gazes focused on her ass. Petyr was focused only on her. By the time they reached the landing of the second floor, Sansa’s agency paid off. Petyr stood just behind her, beside her, and then, against her. His was a firm lean, pinning her between himself and the wall, one hand still tangled with hers, the other sliding around her waist to pull against the small of her back, joining their abdomens in lurid press.
“It doesn’t take much…” he mocked. Whether he spoke to the relative lightweight status of her drinking, or her willingness to rut with him wasn’t made clear. There was a silvery glint to grinning eyes as they washed over her face, settling on her lips. Petyr’s mouth parted, his head a telling tilt as though he intended to slant his mouth across hers and stake claim. “You feeling it yet?” That was clear: he spoke of the liquor. Was it warming her blood, pooling in her tummy, hazing her mind? Is that what he wanted? With a slight lean he brought himself ever closer, the tip of his nose a drag along her cheek, up and over in an arc, until his mouth was at her ear, until she could feel the wash of his hot breath against its delicate shell. But he didn’t nip at that sensitive bit of flesh, didn’t drag his tongue lewdly along her lobe. The hand entwined with hers freed itself, drifting fingers up her side until they reached the neckline of her plain shirt, coasting along its hem. The touch was so light, utterly unobtrusive, almost gentle in its caress as it teased over the protrusion of her collarbone and stole away into the hollow of her throat, up the esophageal column, and then nestled beneath her chin as he leaned back enough to again look her in the eye. There was still a darkness in his, that marauding design all too clear. Sansa’s eyes were blue. Beautiful, beautiful blue.
Another smirk crowded his features, and then he was turning away, walking down the hall and into the bathroom. The sound of the sink turning on and water pouring into the basin echoed out, followed closely by the louder, more prominent belting of the shower stream. When Sansa followed him in, he was already smearing a layer of thick, fresh-smelling foam over his the bits of his face darkened by stubble where he stood above the sink. The shower door was left open.
That seemed intimate, didn’t it? Too intimate? Despite Petyr a hundred times over being privy to Sansa’s prepping process, not once had Sansa ever witness the man in the midst of grooming. Not so much as a buff of the nails or an intentional adjustment of hair. Now he stood poised, razor in hand, bringing the blade carefully down over his face, swiping away unruly hair and cream and flicking it away into the sink, leaving behind a tract of smooth skin. After a few repeated motions of this, Petyr’s eyes finally diverged from the task at hand to accost Sansa in the mirror. The heat of the shower stream was starting to waft out in wispy trails of steam. “Well?” he asked, an expectant lift of one brow. “Go on then.” That he expected her to disrobe and enter the shower first was, perhaps, unfair. It seemed intentional, and any notion of such premeditation would only be confirmed in the creeping twitch of one corner of his mouth, his gaze alight with the sort of gleam that could be found in a cat who delights in first playing with his prey before consuming it. Petyr’s stare was one of wanting; he wanted her to shed her clothing, he wanted her to step into that shower under the scrutiny of his heavy gaze, he wanted her naked and wet and vulnerable.
Sansa knew Petyr as well as he did her — that is to say, not in the slightest. He saw her only in situations of desperation, a protracted state-sanctioned prostitution gracefully designed to prevent any delineation between fantasy and truth. Without the Games her desire failed to exist. It lurked, trapped within a vacuum of Victory, as isolating as it was freeing, shifting quickly from idle distraction to reliable habit. Yes, Petyr saved her. But the creature he pulled from stinking muck by virtue of a lecher’s fortune would never again resemble a mother coveted. Her strength came from a different place now. Not the careful teachings handed down across generations, but through suffering, that exquisite intimacy of witnessing in flesh what so many others salivated at from a pixelated distance.
And it was there Sansa knew her stubbled mentor far better than Catelyn Tully ever might have. Did a young Petyr dream of becoming his best self in honor of childhood infatuation? Were his fantasies filled with effulgent white, that supernal glow reserved solely for love pure and true? No such promise lay with the ruby-haired siren dragging him upstairs. Loss and pain joined in her belly, black like tar, like hell, like hate; the Games put them there, provided a promethean spark so they might roil inside her, coating every organ. Alongside her family Sansa almost forgot that poisonous coating, yet like drew to like, and in Baelish’s company — in his arms — she found at last some acceptance of its hold.
Did mutual contamination condemn their affair? Or merely assure its longevity?
Desire blinded her to the avaricious gleam in grey-green, the girl focused on guiding Petyr to his room, on the tacit consent that she could stay. Beneath illusory appearances power crackled between them: Sansa’s naive faith in where it lay, Baelish’s assurances as to the truth. Heat spread along her nape and shoulders, peach-fuzz hairs prickling with a prey’s primal awareness. Sansa attributed it to lust, nothing more. At the landing she paused, unsure of which door led to his shower, his bed, but Petyr allowed no time for pause. Pliable, she molded herself between wall and man, sapphiric gaze fringed with slackening copper lashes, lips parted on a breath that threatened to become a pant. Tension shifted to exertion, need for resolution grappling with the delectable pleasure of uncertainty. Wanton. A thousand sponsors would beggar themselves for but a few moments alone with that expression of unmitigated hunger, of utter submission.
Only Petyr was privy to it, still.
So too could only he could boast of knowing how distilled liberation warmed the girl to lewd touch and licentious suggestion. Sansa trusted him; if not with her heart, then at least with her general well-being. His advice to do no more than indulge an illusion of intoxication did not go unheeded; tipsy flirtation, boozy relaxation, and late night effervescence were all well-constructed acts in the Capitol, rather than the very real results of overindulgence. But here? Sansa felt it. Weightlessness in limbs that seemed to move well after she bid them to; a growing fuzz at the edges of already frayed thoughts; warmth indistinguishable from the heat spreading out between her thighs. “Mm-hmm.” Theirs was a ballet of nuance. Eyes lidded, then closed, her cheek drifting to brush feather-light against his. Idle fingers toyed with the hem of Baelish’s shirt, nails occasionally grazing over sensitive flesh beneath. In darkness Petyr became a force, a sybaritic specter the mere suggestion of whose touch kept her in thrall.
Ah, and what he suggested! When wandering fingers dared caress suprasternal valley a breath at last caught in her slender throat. Imagination wheeled towards entertainments far more sinister than the unscrupulous advantages already taken by man and girl. Behind a trembling curtain of black Sansa awaited tightening fingers, a first planting of flowers marbled blue and purple, that sharp panic when breath would not come, when she would feel, acutely, the cry of every nerve in every limb. But Petyr’s grip never tightened, knuckles instead settled at the soft underside of her jaw. A tempest stared back at her, all green banished from those eyes so that only clouds of slate remained, lighting arcing around pupils of blackest ebon.
It would not take a fool to lose themselves in that storm, venturing into its heart never to return.
A moment of faltering balance and she followed him, tentative. Her feet pressed back down the plush fibers not yet restored from where Baelish just trod. Sansa would remember later how no pictures adorned his walls, nor were there tables artfully topped with knick-knacks or mementos. It might as well have been the corridor of a hotel she walked down, though even such temporary lodgings attempted more personality than the seemingly more personal wing of Petyr’s home.
At hall’s end Sansa ventured through the growing billow of steam, blinking against the damp.
Until now a perfunctory air lingered about their liaisons. For all the sweat and seed that stained them, the lovers seemed to be silencing a base urge rather than satisfying latent desire. They did not even indulge in the simple pleasure of undressing, with eyes and hands raking over naked flesh. A few adjustments to buttons, zippers, and ties sufficed, just enough to free those parts essential to swift climax. No matter how those habits changed in the weeks or months to come, no image of Baelish disrobing would ever rival the nonchalant intimacy of his routine witnessed then. To watch made Sansa feel complicit in some crime whose pettiness was exceeded only by its prurience. Speech stirred her. Ephemeral droplets coasted and drifted through the tiled space, alighting at last on the edges of a trap laid, its edges shimmering, wavering, disappearing again. To escape was to forsake him, rejecting all gravity of her previous pleas. Sansa could only step into it willfully, unshaken.
She waited until razor’s rasp ceased, Petyr’s eyes shifting from the task of his shaving to the girl who lingered some distance away in the mirror. Staring at him in fogged glass Sansa toyed with the hem of her shirt, much as he had, before drawing it slowly up and over her head. Long ruby hair tumbled down, though it did not quite obscure the lace covering her breasts. A Capitol garment, unmistakably. Pale cream almost as light as her skin dipped low over each swell, the pink curve of her nipples barely visible through the swirling pattern. Still she stared, daring him to look away. Her trousers came next, resigned to the pile atop her cottony blouse, peeled away to reveal matching panties. For several moments Sansa stood there, arms slack at her sides; whether it was for Baelish to appreciate the vision or for her to grow accustomed to his unbroken scrutiny remained unclear.
She shimmied free of her underwear first, still bare between the legs from her stylist’s most recent attentions. A snap of elastane and her brassiere vanished. That nude apparition lingered for but a moment reflected beside Petyr before Sansa slipped into a shower’s sheltering opacity. Within seconds her skin turned rosy with heat. Absent were the dozens of potions that punctuated her bath, replaced with the simplest, though not the cheapest, soaps. She caressed a blue-green bar, her fingers coming away smelling of him.
From glassy confines a quiet entreaty echoed: “Don’t let me distract you.”
Sansa caught him by surprise. Maybe he wasn’t prepared to be called out on his drunken bullshit or maybe he hadn’t expected her to be so frank. No. He hadn’t expected repayment; he hadn’t even figured he’d earned any. That hadn’t been why he’d helped her, although the real reason behind it was far worse to admit than existing under the expectation of not getting something for nothing. It was the same reason he’d not looked the other way and faded into the apathetic role of bystander during her Games as he had for so many years prior. It was who she was, or, rather more accurately, whose daughter she was. Petyr still thought of Catelyn often; very likely he’d thought of her during those moments when he was slicked with sweat and rutting with her daughter.
Sansa wondered how Baelish had been before? Not so clever, at least not in the way she would have appreciated. He’d been small for his age, weak, relegated to simpler, softer duties than hefting axes and carrying bundles of logs. But he’d been a kind boy, friendly, perhaps unusually bright and inquisitive. Truth be told he didn’t remember much of himself or how he existed before the Games, the boy that he had been having long ago faded away. What he did remember was the intensity of his feelings he’d felt for a red-headed girl. Not a Stark, but a Tully. She’d had the same red hair as Sansa, if not a little duller, and the same pale skin. More importantly she’d had the same blue eyes, more brilliantly blue than the streams cutting and weaving their way through Seven’s forests. They were more like the blue of a clear summer sky, and just as warm. Catelyn had been equal parts sweet and cruel to Petyr, teasing him, leading him on, beckoning with one slender finger only to shut the door at the last moment. She’d let him kiss her a few times, on the cheek and on the lips, always laughing in a way that sounded beautiful even in its playful mockery.
Petyr had been besotted. He’d been in love, he was certain, and though the true complexities of love could never be entirely revealed to a boy of his age it did not diminish what he’d felt. He had loved Catelyn so much that even when she’d rejected him after his return and victory from his Hunger Games, he’d never stopped wondering. He’d stood by and watched as she fell into the arms of Eddark Stark, and nursed the ache in his gut when she gave him children. Petyr spent more time in the Capitol than he did in the district, but he never stopped wanting the same things he’d wanted as a boy. Simpleness. Affection. Companionship. Comfort. And so when Sansa Stark’s name had been called out on that fateful morning nearly a year ago, it would have been easy for him to succumb to the spiteful wrath which had filled him for so many years. It was the memory of his affinity for her mother which goaded him into action. He’d saved her because of Catelyn. Both the first time, and the second.
Petyr frowned somewhat, taking abject offense to the notion that he expected her to prostitute herself – for him. But he didn’t care so much as to say anything in his defense. He’d been letting her do it – trade her flesh for favors – since that night in Snow’s mansion. Why should she believe he intended for anything different now? Though his name had not been intricately stamped on some official dossier with detailed instructions on how best to tantalize him, he still let her open her legs and serve as a buffer for the less savory business happenings between them. “Yeah,” he both agreed and deflected in the same syllable.
With less pleasure than he thought he might have, he watched her swallow the alcohol. There was never any certainty about her. Baelish was always left with the distinct impression that she did what she did because of someone else’s expectation, and never her own. He suspected this was a symptom of winning the Games, but he could not be certain, having never known her or spoken to her before them. Why did she have such a need to please? The light glinted copper and red against the amber liquid, and Petyr felt suddenly seedy, as though he’d lured her into his den of iniquity and forced her to dampen her sensibilities with liquor. “For me,” he replied, a sharpness to his tone. He reached across her, curling his fingers about the glass and sliding it from her grasp. “You know. Misery loves company. That sort of thing.” He held up the glass. “Anyway you’re only as drunk as the most sober person in the room.” With a bitingly false smile he emptied the remainder of the alcohol; a hiss through his teeth told her that it burned. With a tap he set the glass back down, rising to his feet, surprisingly steady for the amount of booze he must have consumed over the last few hours, days, weeks.
“I wish you would have called,” he drawled in retort. “I might have penciled in a shower.” A hand lifted to rub over his face, scratching at the thick layer of stubble, hooking idly into the top of his shirt and stretching it down. “You can come back tomorrow.” His hair, messed and untended, seemed inordinately thick and lush, wavy and with a bit of curl to it that caught the light as he stepped into the sun, squinting miserably as though he’d been living in a cave. For a moment he stared across the gravel sea, looking towards Sansa’s house. It seemed empty, but how was he to know? Petyr’s hand settled on the door knob, ready to open the door and usher Sansa on her way. “Or…” he paused, sweeping his gaze back towards her, heavy with drink and a lack of morality. “You can join me.” And then his gaze turned and flicked suggestively up the stairs (his home’s layout the very same as hers), towards his bedroom and the bathroom and the shower.
Yeah.
Why flee the Capitol then, if gratitude dictated Sansa come to him with her body willingly offered? Doubt teased at her, nearly urged the girl to speak, yet finally she let his sentiment stand uncontested. Before that list their encounters had progressed simply, predictably; though everything that ran beneath each meeting — dark undercurrents of memory, need, loneliness — swirled into an unrecognizable miasma, its force seemed easily ignored, never threatening to sweep away impassioned lovers. Now she felt the weight of expectations, unvoiced and unfulfilled, suffocating whatever ease the pair had cultivated before venturing back to Snow’s domain.
Perhaps that faint unbalancing made her so compliant, swallowing down bronzed liquid as though it was the Elixir of Life. Anything to recall how they first coupled, once violent desperation ebbed and familiarity took hold. This…expression of distress, made plain by dirtied glasses, empty bottles, a cloying whiff of rotted food, matched poorly with Baelish’s prior aloofness. She didn’t immediately know how to accommodate it. So fumble Sansa did, unguided by those helpful instructions some lackey had typed up for every other man she was meant to bed, swerving wildly at each suggestion. She couldn’t lose him. Lose him, as though Petyr had once laid in her possession. Was that how she thought of him? Hers? Alcohol billowed through her mind in a thickening fog, making fruitful introspection difficult. Instead she merely sat there, slumped on an overstuffed sofa, tilting her drink this way and that, contemplating how the colors shifted in murky sunlight.
A few droplets threatened to slop over when Baelish snatched it away, though once again all remained miraculously in crystalline prison. Copper brows furrowed, trying to retrace where she must have gone wrong, to earn such censure; drinking between them was not out of place, nor was a bit of repartee before intimate acts. Damn it, why must he make things so difficult. Even the barest motive would have satisfied her curiosity, much less the man’s grave declaration of ruin. Afterwards, spurred by shared guilt, they could rut until it all mattered just a little less. Yet now Sansa wallowed in her own misery, albeit far shallower than his, satisfaction prickling to hear him hiss in protest at an uncooperative swallow.
Confusion deepened when Petyr rose, moving towards the entryway as if in dismissal. Commingling with desire already voiced it wove knots into her belly, made worse by what must have amounted to unintentional preening on his part. No stylist’s mousse or rounded brush could create such curls, nor was he likely to muss it with abandon had they tried. His movements came so naturally, so unguarded, for a moment Sansa found herself wholly distracted from the plain attempt at banishment. That was who she had come to speak with, sit with, rut with. A man unfettered by expectation or convention, antithetical to those crowds amongst whose number Sansa must linger for years. Upon the couch she shifted, barely straightening. If he worried one of her siblings might spot their sister departing from Baelish’s abode and question why she smelled of whiskey, then Petyr’s fears were completely without foundation. Jon reported to the mill daily, taking on new duties each time an elder became too slow or suffered injury; every other Starkling sat woefully in school or, if they played hooky, were not foolish enough to wander back towards home.
Much like every other Tuesday in Seven, this one threatened to pass uneventfully.
Until he extended an invitation. Blue followed green, Sansa looking up along the banister to what tiny sliver of carpeting and wall she could see of the second floor. Showering meant they would both remove their clothes. All of them. Though it had been months since that night in Snow’s mansion, not once had the pair both divested themselves entirely before the act. Sober, she might have hesitated before answering — and no different would the answer be — but with his pilfered liquor coursing warm and sweet through welcoming veins, Sansa moved without delay. “Alright.” From the couch she rose, smile playing at her gaze but not her lips, sullen introspection lost at first mention of reconciliation. “I’d like that.” By the stairs Sansa paused, hand extended to take his, and with fingers tangled began ascending. Every step or two the girl glanced back, scared he might stop or reconsider, grip pulling him closer with each repetition.
Had Petyr ruined her? Certainly the man on the couch suffering from a deal too many sips of alcohol hadn’t thought of it like that. He hadn’t thought of it at all. Perhaps if he knew the truth of it, of her, of what she had been before that evening when she’d accosted him in Snow’s mansion – perhaps then he would have taken different steps. Everything, in fact, would have been different. None of it would have happened. And so the innocuous flutter of an unintentional lie had spun out of control and changed the course of a great many things. The value of purity, even its perception, was quite high. Men would pay for it. Men would sacrifice for it. Men would go to war for it. Even Petyr had taken measures to secure something he believed Sansa’s to possess, though it was not purity of the flesh which he fought for, but perhaps an ever more rare purity of the heart and mind. Something uncorrupted in a world of ultimate corruption seemed worth saving, though its rescue and preservation would, in the end, be as futile as rescuing a kitten from a busy road only to place it back in its home within a garbage filled alley. Petyr hadn’t saved her; he’d simply delayed the inevitable. For she was right: no stay of execution was indefinite, and he would not be able to intervene each time a powerful member of the Capitol’s upper echelons wished to spend a private evening with Seven’s latest victor.
So what was it then? A show of good will? A metaphorical olive branch which he hoped might mend some of the quarrel between them? It seemed too extravagant to be that when a simple apology would have sufficed. It was impossible, then, to know what Baelish had been thinking or what he thought of sitting there beside her.
She wouldn’t look at him and Petyr didn’t quite know what to make of it. He didn’t quite know what to make of the fact that she was there at all, pouring drinks and helping herself to them. He’d not been so out of sorts in a while, he realized, and this was further confirmed by the way he struggled to read the time. He squinted towards the same dusty clock on the wall which had once told him he was in danger of missing his train. The same clock he’d ignored in favor of finding physical satisfaction with the girl beside him on the couch. The numbers were blurred, the second hand moving too fast or too slow for him to focus. He gave up and decided it must be somewhere near midday based on the way the light was filtering in through the curtains. What actual day it was eluded him entirely. Sometime during the week, he surmised, or else Sansa wouldn’t be there. She’d be with her family, doing domestic things like playing board games or laughing jovially about this and that around the dinner table. Is that what he imagined went on in the house across the courtyard?
The crooked smile he’d worn fell away like some discarded paper mask. The corners of his eyes pinched with thought, with the inability to process a thought. Sansa pushed the newly-filled tumbler towards him. Its amber contents swirled and sloshed, swaying dangerously close to spilling over the rounded lip, but always turning back the other way at just the last second. The reflection of Sansa through the glass was distorted, a fun-house mirror with which to view his fellow victor bulge and bow and seem entirely too red through the distilled hue of fermented fruit mash.
“Why?” There he looked away from the freakish reflection, turning only his head to look at her. Was it some sort of a memento she wished to keep? The day I was almost sold to Lapworth! The gown had been stunning. It had fit her perfectly from head to toe. It was the sort of gown she could do anything and beguile anyone in. It was the sort of gown she could pretend in. But what point was there in bringing it to Seven where she had no need of a dress to achieve any of it? In Seven she was already something of a mythical creature, looked at as more of a character from some fable than an actual human being. They didn’t idolize her in the same way they did in the Capitol, but she would never be one of them ever again. Sequestered away in some forgotten luxury village, bringing rations and reward to her district by simple existence, shuttled to and fro from the Capitol without cause – and most importantly, sitting atop that wretched dais and forever being a face associated with condemning two new children year after year to the Capitol’s bloodsport. That was all done intentionally. The Capitol never wanted its victors to be viewed as one of the people, as someone for the citizens of the districts to rally around and celebrate in the sort of meaningful way that a true-born hero would have inspired. The victors of the Hunger Games were sentenced to a life in limbo, never quite being part of the Capitol’s fold, but neither being entirely part of their home district again either.
A slow blink came in reply to Sansa’s fumbling answer. She didn’t know either. She wanted to see him. So she’d brought it back. For him. To wear for him. Which meant she wanted to continue whatever it was they’d abandoned in that Capitol hotel room. So his sacrifice – if that’s what it was – had worked in the sense that she’d clearly forgiven him. “Oh.” It sounded more apathetic than his stare appeared; his stare held a glimmer of interest, though it was more of a passing thought than a solid idea. Petyr’s gaze dropped to where her fingers worried over each other. He couldn’t decide if she was nervous or uncomfortable. “Is this my repayment?” Ever aware of the exchange of currency, Petyr understood that Sansa sitting next to him had nothing to do with the idea of recompense. It was far worse than that: Baelish now represented normalcy to Sansa. Solace. A haven. A place to decompress and recuperate the things she’d lost. And what had she lost? Save for some fragments of innocence she shouldn’t have still been holding onto, or some trumped up ideas about chivalry and humanity. The arm behind Petyr’s head slowly unfolded; the lines of muscle that subtly shifted told her that he may be lean, but he was far from weak. “I helped you, so I get to have you?” It was difficult to tell whether he was speaking seriously or wryly, and the tilt to his head did nothing to help. Further difficult was what he meant by the words ‘have you’. Was he speaking to her company? Her companionship? Her body?
“I think maybe you’re not drunk enough.” With that, Baelish leaned slowly forward, two fingers touching to the side of the glass and easing it back towards Sansa’s side of the table. Not once did his gaze waver from her face, as though he delighted in taking in every twitch of uncertainty or discomfort. The entire motion seemed somehow like a taunt, a dare, an unspoken challenge he urged her to meet.
Blue far clearer than Baelish’s fuzzed mossy stare followed its hazy track to also contemplate the clock hanging placidly on distant wall. Tick—tick—tick. Sansa discerned no profound meaning to a pulse regulated by tiny metal cogs, no statement on life’s foibles purveyed through what minuscule grains of sand were forgotten by teeth poorly meshed, and how their immeasurable errors eventually grew into entire minutes, hours of lost time. Yet how like an eye did ivory face seem. Did Petyr feel the weight of its stare? Sad, perhaps, that neither could draw parallels to those symbols so prized by civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, long since turned to dust and forgotten. Only Snow’s all-seeing-eye looked down upon the districts and their victors, an unblinking stare of inky black threatening to burn through what flimsy shelter one could find. Was he thinking of the president now? His power? What he might do were Lapworth, or any other sponsor, to complain?
Such worry washed over her but did not cling; like a brine-kissed tide it left unmistakable impressions on her thoughts, though Sansa would not think on them until much later, after they had dried and festered to an irritating, demanding itch. Instead of judgment perhaps Baelish found a certain steadiness in the predictable loops of triplicate hands, a sobering hold into which intoxicated fingers might dig. For her part Sansa saw nothing, only the time. A few minutes after eleven in the morning; not too early, not too late. She had hoped to arrange her visit in those tempting doldrums between breakfast and lunch, never guessing that Petyr would begin a liquid diet so early. Rather than speak with him and leave, she now sat well-ensconced on those familiar cushions, cheeks and tongue and throat all humming, recognizing the pattern of her actions yet somehow incapable of reversing it.
At last she watched Petyr, fingers still twiddling in her lap. Even drunk there was a certain sharpness to him, that final defense nearly unassailable by liquor or trust. Deep within that intoxicating fog lay razor-thin wit, the magnetic persuasion that had unknowingly drawn Sansa in. Slowed by whiskey she could better recognize its tells and sly mechanisms, an academic exercise instead of one that granted any true advantage. Strip away the finery, the cynicism, the aloof distance, and she found a clever boy. How terrible it must have been, to see games and politics so clearly as a child, using them to one’s advantage, to survive, only for such drive to be used as an excuse to vilify. Sansa wondered what he must have been like, before. The fantasy built itself easily: quick-witted and eager to prove himself, perhaps a little grating, but ultimately possessed of an ambition no different from the hundreds of other children born into a virtual guarantee of poverty and toil. Or maybe he was nothing like that. A glance could never tell her, and certainly neither would Baelish.
Was that what she wanted, to wear a spangled dress for him and him alone? Not an egregious leap of logic by any means, for no one else resided in Seven that she would seek to entertain in such a way. Yet that night in a Capitol hotel room had left things between them painfully clear — Petyr wanted nothing of his ruby-haired Victor. To succumb, then, to whatever impulse might compel Sansa into such a flagrant display — of what? Desperation? Desire? — led only toward humiliation. No prideful Stark would ever place themselves in the way of such harm. She spoke the truth, then, uncertain as to why or how her hands worked to fold bejeweled fabric into a little square, packing it away to ostensibly gather dust in Seven rather than the Capitol. She simply didn’t know. In their world ignorance was a dangerous indulgence, surprises born from it far more likely to harm than delight.
But she made no effort to correct Petyr. He thought Sansa wanted to wear it for him; that he had earned it, even. A gaze unfocused, vaguely contemplating the drunken mess of Baelish, resettled on that hazy green stare.
“Was that what you hoped for?” she asked in turn. “Repayment?” So many of their encounters happily swathed themselves in convenient lies; now was perhaps the closest either had come to unfettered honesty regarding their own expectations, their own desires. Movement distracted her. The limb he shifted was not as well-muscled as those of mill workers, yet neither did it have even a whisper of the doughy softness most men in the Capitol found in style. It was real. Simply the way Baelish had been designed by fate, unaltered by forced labor or outlandish fashion. And looking to his arm recalled long fingers, firm and steady, guiding her, caressing…
A blink cleared her thoughts, but not the faint pinkish blush dotting both cheeks.
“I think the past few weeks have proven that isn’t how I want to do things.” Sex, in exchange for aid. Glass raced across wood grain with a low, rattling hiss; again its contents threatened to slop over, yet Baelish had used a gentle hand. She didn’t want to get drunk, didn’t want to further confuse whatever they were or were not doing with one another, but she wanted to go back across the courtyard even less. “Drunk enough for me?” Amber caught the late morning glow seeping through shuttered windows, casting a yellow-orange glow over her face as Sansa raised it to her lips. She took one sip, then another, swallowing methodically until half the liquid had vanished. Partway through her eyes fluttered shut, all the better to disguise a faint prickling of tears brought on by its burn. When they reopened, focusing slowly on Petyr, not a trace remained. “Or for you?” For a little while she sat there in contemplative silence, Tully blue gradually narrowing with the same drugged focus that Baelish’s eyes had before. “I wish you had washed up,” Sansa declared. “I’d rather enjoy kissing, I think.”
What could Baelish possibly have said to Johanna to make her agree? Years ago she had let her family die in taking a stand against the Capitol, in her refusal to sell her body as they had wanted her and so many others to do. As they had wanted Sansa to do. What could be more precious to Johanna than her family? What would have made her bend and break? Probably Sansa would never know, never find out, for neither Petyr nor Johanna would tell her. Did it give Sansa any pause? It should. Whatever it was Petyr had done, he had done it succinctly and without compunction. If he could do it to Johanna, certainly he could do it to Sansa.
Or could he?
Why had he helped her? Because Johanna was already ruined? Did that mean by opposition that Sansa wasn’t? That he saw her through the same muted white light that the Capitol did and he absurdly fancied her to be somehow pure? Or was it something else? There had been so many adamant refusals – even that evening he had clearly expected her to capitulate and spend the evening with Lapworth. Something in that corner with the water trickling down all around them had made him change his mind. Did it matter anymore? She said thank you and the smile on his face actually faltered; she could see it wither away. Petyr said nothing.
The couch beside him bowed beneath her weight, the cushion sagging. He could smell her, although she wasn’t spritzed with designer mist or the Capitol’s latest, most favorite perfume. She smelled clean; it made him realize, absently, that he almost certainly wasn’t, and that by contrast his odor was likely quite foul. He didn’t care. Shame had never been an emotion he’d allowed Sansa to see, he wasn’t going to start now. Either too drunk to form a rebuttal or uncaring of the fact, he watched her down the remainder of his drink. “You should have.” Whatever generosity he’d felt before, it had obviously evaporated along with his sobriety. “Don’t apologize. It’s a good lesson. You don’t get something for nothing.” And what did Petyr get? Not in a million years would anyone suspect Petyr of being purely altruistic. What had Petyr gotten out of rescuing her?
“She’ll get over it.” Petyr stretched an arm back behind his head, using his hand as a makeshift pillow as he leaned back against the couch. “Or she won’t.” A smile, too slanted to be brought on by amusement. “She’s been doing it for a while…screwing those Capitol fucks. It doesn’t mean anything to her.” Except if that were true, if he believed that, then he almost certainly wouldn’t be enveloped in a fog of alcoholic fumes, holed away in his home in Seven which he’d professed to Sansa before as it being somewhere he actively disliked. Petyr had left the relative comfort of the Capitol because he hadn’t wanted to see it. He hadn’t wanted to see Johanna cavorting around with that lecherous pig who he’d sold her to. And for what? Baelish’s gaze turned to Sansa, idling on her face.
“A shame you had to waste that dress, though.“
Amber sustenance burned its way along her throat like unshed tears, collecting in a warm pool just behind her navel. She had not drunk so much, so quickly, since that first evening in the Capitol. Then, alcohol resembled a familiar friend, bubbly, sweet, spreading tendrils so delicate one hardly noticed how firmly entrenched they had become; now every droplet seemed intent on punishment, as though it could burn away each vile, selfish cell and leave her clean. Pure. How Petyr saw her. Why else would he give Johanna’s ruination as the cause for his abrupt switch? And was Sansa not already ruined, by him? Possessiveness fitted poorly with past reticence, at odds with her own efforts to wheedle the man into a state resembling enthusiasm; from the start it was Baelish who emphasized her communal qualities, driving firm his assurance of future obligations.
Besides, such a stay of execution could not last indefinitely…could it?
Closer now, Sansa could see just how far the man’s decrepitude extended. What before had been a subtle shadow of stubble — perhaps more conscientiously tended than he let on — formed the beginnings of a proper beard. Petyr’s shirt sagged from consecutive days of wear, its lack of stains not commending his neatness, rather speaking to a lack of meals. Too polite, too infuriatingly concerned to wrinkle her nose, the girl still could not help but notice how he smelled faintly similar to Jon when he returned home from a long shift…without having performed hours of back-breaking labor in the mills and forests.
And it seemed as though Petyr had it backwards: what Johanna got for bedding Lapworth, what Sansa got for her social whoring, what Baelish got for his moment of weakness. Nothing. Benefits came yet others reaped them; as it was with the Games, those born beyond Capitol borders fumbled for scraps after their labors ended. Guilt, fury, self-loathing — the prizes of exercising choice and rescuing an innocent from ruin. “I thought you’d already taught me that one,” she told him quietly. With Lapworth. A half-empty bottle sat amidst dirty glasses on the table. Sansa reached for it, the cork unstoppering with a protesting squeak, and poured them a generous double serving. Fetching herself a glass hardly seemed worthy of the effort. Rather than take another drink, though, she just pushed it back towards Baelish.
She’s been doing it for a while… Would he say that about her one day, to another, younger tribute? "I brought it back.” One could hardly wear the same frock twice — too little time gone and everyone would know, too much and half a dozen fashions would have come and and gone. Still, sheer fabric and delicate gems had no place in Seven either, amongst the sawdust and pine needles. Why then would Sansa pack it away in her case, instead of simply returning it into her team’s hands? Though all present had moaned and shrieked over how possibly they could have misinterpreted the sponsor’s requests, none paid any mind to what actually happened to his desired affectations. “I don’t know why, I just…” Sansa trailed off, unable to meet his stare, hands fidgeting in her lap. “I just wanted to come back and— and…see you.”
How long had it been? Two weeks? Three weeks? Time suspended without the reminder of dates and times and the need for punctuality. The thick haze of alcohol – that helped too. The door was unlocked. There was no reason for Baelish to leave his door open save for the simple reason that he was, at some point, expecting her. Oh, it could be attributed to laziness, to a lack of caring, to the confident knowledge that there was little chance he stood to be burgled or bothered with, and it would all certainly be true. Except he was expecting her, waiting for her to come bearing down, looking for answers.
And she had.
Ragged was, perhaps, a generous description. Baelish was downright slovenly; unshaven, worn-out, and without a doubt drunk. This was not his ordinary, comfortable, functioning drunk, where a glass had existed in a place long and well enough to leave rings behind, but the sort of drunk that inspired rumors of a town lush who staggered and ambled and reeked and who sung songs at inappropriate times. It would become obvious to her almost immediately when he regarded her, turning his head with a bit of a bobble and a lean. There was a redness to his eyes that could not be attributed to a lack of sleep. Baelish sniffed, laughter bubbling up and spilling out of a too-dry throat; it sounded raspy, like a winter’s barren breeze. “Did she?” This thought entertained him, but he didn’t expand on it. He knew Sansa was there, hungry for an explanation, and so without fanfare he fed it to her:
“She was already ruined.”
Ruined, in the way that he hadn’t wanted to ruin Sansa on their last night spent together in the Capitol. Johanna hated him, certainly. She hated Sansa, too. She hated everyone and everything. It was the only thing that kept her alive.
She was ruined.
Long before Petyr had sold her to Lapworth she’d been ruined. Since before her family had been butchered all because she’d refused to cooperate with the Capitol’s whims. Johanna had been ruined the instant her name was plucked from that crystal reaping bowl; Petyr still remembered the look in her eyes, that hollow nothingness, and the way her fingers curled, digging half-moon wounds into her palms as she’d walked stiffly up to the podium.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?” There was an absent smile on his face, as though he found something privately amusing. “I helped you.” Isn’t that what she’d asked for? His help? Not that sort of help, he imagined. Not the sort of help that meant she was only saved because it condemned someone else. That was the kicker, of course: that’s the only help there was now.
With startlement she realized that however unkempt or disheveled the house had seemed on her first visit, its state paled in comparison to current conditions. A faint whiff of rotten sweetness tinged the air, as though he always took out the garbage a day too late. No food lay scattered across flat surfaces attracting flies, though there were at least half a dozen empty glasses, identical to the one filled and sweating on an adjacent table, littering the room. She suspected that upstairs his bed would be unmade — or worse, unused — while beyond a darkened doorway his refrigerator chilled only air and empty shelves. That laugh pained her. All Sansa wanted, oddly, was to fetch him a glass of water, comb back his hair, and put him to sleep. This was no way in which to talk about debts and secrets, much less demand explanations for something that clearly came at a steep cost. Then Petyr spoke of ruination, his reason for that dastardly switch.
Her first emotion? Guilt. I did this to him, to them both, Sansa thought. No one else was supposed to get hurt. I never wanted someone to take my place; I just wanted them to leave me in peace! Over and over the wheel turned, those who dared climb atop it also fueling the motions which would later crush others so unfortunately in its path. Regardless of how many obstacles, how many bodies one flung before it the great thing kept spinning; Snow’s will — and this, like all other misfortunes, found claimed roots in presidential soil — pounded inexorably forward, more reliable than a rising sun. Victim or Victor, blessed or condemned, one could not, would not exist without the other.
“That was meant to come second,” she murmured. Of course Sansa had a list. An agenda. First, make pithy opening remark. Second, thank your mentor for not prostituting you. Third, inquire after his health…
Nothing so benign as hollowness was to be found in Johanna’s eyes when the two Victors crossed paths. Instead they flared with an apocalyptic fury, surpassed only by the raging string of expletives hurled at a girl reduced to quivering silence beneath their onslaught. Some rumors said it was that explosive meeting which spurred the Stark girl’s flight back home, so fearful of another quarrel she felt it best to bide her time and let Mason’s famous temper ease. Oh, how terribly close to right they were.
“Thank you.” And then she walked across the den, uninvited, to take a seat beside him. Close enough to be considered company, far enough away as to avoid any suspicion of lewd overture. Sansa voiced no reprisals, recited no childish morality into which his actions failed to fit. Instead a hand decidedly smaller and paler than Baelish’s reached out, retrieving his drink, pressing it against her lips for an indulgent swig. There was no clinking of ice when she set it back down. “I’m sorry, if it…” Hurt you? Johanna bore the greatest hurt, not Petyr. “I should have listened. I’m sorry.”
There had been a line or two about Sansa’s sudden ailment, allusions towards some problematic infection. But it wasn’t about what Lapworth couldn’t have. Baelish knew how to pitch; he’d been doing it long enough that he understood how things worked. No one wanted to hear about the problems – they wanted solutions. How could Lapworth benefit from not spending that evening – or any other – with Sansa Stark? There were a dozen things Petyr could offer him, but nothing that Lapworth didn’t already have or couldn’t already bargain for himself.
Except for one thing.
There were a few names on Lapworth’s list who hadn’t been crossed off due to varying circumstances. Some were beyond even his reach, providing more use to the Capitol than that of a simple companion to be bought. Others had nothing to lose and therefore no leverage with which to be bargained for. Threats meant little to those who didn’t care. Even more so when the person in question had won their Games with nothing more than a stroke of luck and pure, unfettered strategy which required no outside intervention. Such a person happened to be well within Baelish’s reach, though stood decidedly outside of the purview of others. This person had required no parachutes to win, no sizable donations to seize her crown, and had won quite by surprise by capitalizing on her own perceived weaknesses to the masses and her fellow competitors alike. This person now did primarily what she wanted and little else simply because she had no attachments, no cares, no concerns for anyone other than herself. This person intrigued Lapworth immensely, and on more than one occasion he had told Petyr so.
But Johanna Mason would not be easily swayed.
Petyr knew it was a gamble, but he knew also that he had enough of a rapport with the stubborn, independent girl from his home district that there might be a chance. Already Johanna was known to be wild, promiscuous, although these conquests of hers were by her choice rather than the forced hand of the Capitol, and Horatius Lapworth was certainly not the sort of creature she would deign to spend an evening with. But Johanna was filled with hate, self-loathing, a terrible rage that all but consumed her. Such a rage was easily provoked, and rage itself was a dreadful mire of irrationality. That, Baelish posited, was something he could exploit. Though it would neither be easy nor simple, and he would not come out of the exchange a better man whose conscience was clear. Saving Sansa from the deed only meant that someone else had to take her place. Help was never free. Favors were not simple matters of convenience. In the Capitol, all actions or inactions had a price, most of which were grave. As such, convincing Lapworth that Johanna Mason would prove a far more entertaining liaison than Sansa Stark was the easy part. Securing the participation of the other victor from Seven was decidedly more difficult, and did not come without its tolls.
No one came looking for Sansa in her hotel room that evening. Petyr Baelish did not arrive at her door with the soft rapping of one who had done neither good nor bad, but something abruptly in-between. No explanation came for anything which had transpired. The next morning, when breakfast was delivered to her suite, there was no note from her mentor to be found amongst the spread of freshly-squeezed juices and decadently buttered croissants. At least…there was no note written in his hand. Found inside of the news column delivered with her meal were several different stories – replete with photographs – detailing Johanna’s Night on the Town. At her side was one familiarly paunchy Lapworth. And so it became obvious: Baelish had facilitated a trade. From Stark to Mason. From red to brown.
It was Tatty who came to her later the same day suffering a blustering confusion as to why Sansa’s overfilled itinerary had, overnight, seemingly been erased. Oh, there were still parties and appearances to make, naturally (Tatty assured with a recuperating gusto), but the private bookings had all been canceled. Was it something she had done? Was it that gown Sansa had worn? Too much, too soon? Had it spoiled her innocent facade? One’s presentation was always a delicate balance. Sansa’s prep team were nearly beside themselves with grief. Even Lapworth had rejected her! And his appetite was insatiable! Tatty was quick to assure Sansa, with a hand over a mouth rounded by scandal, that her comment had not been a double entendre. Everyone was upset. Even Petyr had gone back to Seven on the morning train, clearly unable to take the shame. No one knew what to do!
She continued on in a like manner until her lip stain needed reapplying. Glancing into a pocket mirror, she bemoaned her own sloppiness, and apologized, sincerely, to Sansa for her obvious social failings and unintentional missteps. For an escort, nothing more traumatizing could happen than to have her prized victor be suddenly worth nothing.
On the train, Petyr recalled the forlorn little smile with which Sansa had dutifully accepted Lapworth’s advances, and decided it was that minuscule gesture which had convinced him not to stay his hand. She’d accepted it. She was ready to do as she was told, ready to pay her dues. Perhaps that was all he’d wanted.
Sansa awoke — for the first time — long after midnight. She had tumbled to one side, sleep and gravity tugging her limp body from its shallow, dozing angle into a precipitous drop. For a moment the girl had no notion as to where she was. Seven? The Training Center? Lapworth’s? Memories trickled back into focus, first the start of her evening, then the end. Petyr’s rescue. His disappearance. When last she saw him the silver-winged mentor had been speaking quite charismatically to her duped sponsor; his rushed instructions gave no hint at what lie she ought maintain, how long her exile should continue. Blearily she noted the time from a dimly illuminated clock beside the bed. Late. Very late. If Baelish had come to explain then only silence met his knocks. Half-stumbling Sansa made herself properly ready for sleep; jewels sparkled in a heap on the floor, water ran down her face in shades of peach and black and beige, the tingle of mint replaced alcohol’s stale nuisance on her palate.
She slept like the dead.
Except…Petyr did not call that morning, either. Instead an Avox awakened her; rather, what sumptuous feast he bore on silvered trays, a dozen steamy tendrils wafting towards an empty belly, awoke her. Sansa still marveled at what plenty the Capitol knew. A tureen overflowing with scrambled eggs — at least a dozen, cooked to impossibly fluffy heights — stood next to platters of plump sausages and bacon dotted with fresh black specks of pepper. She nearly burned her fingers prying open a roll which coughed out another puff of steam, its brothers and sisters stacked in a pyramid beside neatly sliced pats of butter, jams in varying shades of amethyst, ruby, citrine. There were even fruits, carved with the same delicate precision as those Baelish had ordered; she gravitated towards them first, idly shifting that day’s paper into view.
Lapworth stood out at once, his portliness impossible to overlook. Indeed he filled nearly the entire front-page photograph, crowding out whatever slender thing had substituted for Sansa in her absence. It took several moments for her to recognize the face, a faint shadow of anger lingering beneath all the cosmetics; though she was old enough to have watched that year’s Games and remember them, the difference between a child and a young woman savaged by Snow’s demands sufficed to make the other girl almost completely unfamiliar.
Johanna.
The utter opposite of Sansa, such an exchange made little sense. No wonder Petyr had been speaking so animatedly last night, making his pitch. She had to talk to him, had to understand…what about paying her dues? Yet when Tatty and the others arrived, the man did not count amongst their number. Preoccupied with what had become, to her mind, an unmitigated disaster, the escort could offer no insight into his actions. Not that Sansa asked. Everything conspired to make her believe that whatever had occurred at the party, whatever he had done, constituted a great secret. And so she donned a regretful frown, playing along with ignorance and dismay alike, though she was careful not to suggest any attempt at reconciliation. Her facade faltered only at the news: Petyr had left. Left the Capitol, left her, left behind the entire mess of Sansa’s shattered worth.
Reality, however, proved somewhat less dire. Guests still clambered to meet her, to touch her, and men of all ages attempted to ply her with drinks and gifts to end the night in their beds. None so wealthy as Lapworth, whom she blessedly failed to see again, but such fortune was relative to a girl from the districts. She rejected every offer. Hope lingered on in many of them, though, enough left with the impression of an impending decision that Sansa took on an almost mythical, if imminently frustrating, reputation. This Victor required more than the usual temptations, a puzzle none so far had managed to solve. But try they did.
Over the next fortnight only one encounter soured her mood, so severely that when a vacant evening at last appeared on her calendar Sansa declared the next week off. Her family missed her, the girl declared, and would miss her even more when summer arrived. It was an excuse sufficient to earn her a ticket home.
Her train reached Seven late in the evening, much to Sansa’s pleasure. Despite spending most of the ride deep in thought she still required time before setting out to fulfill the true purpose of her visit. A night with family helped; she had even missed Arya, whose sharp tongue and shifting moods sometimes grated terribly. Bathed in the soft glow of moonlight filtering through her bedroom’s curtains, it was almost possible to think of the Capitol as merely a bad dream.
Almost.
This time she came to Baelish’s empty-handed, assuming pretense all but abandoned between them. Except Sansa hadn’t journeyed all the way back to Seven in search of a quick rut on an old couch; she wanted answers, an explanation, or at least some context for what had happened. When Petyr failed to answer her knock she simply pushed on the door. Open, just as before. She found him on that sofa, awake but more ragged than his polished self of two weeks prior. “I saw Johanna,” Sansa told him without preamble. “She said I should tell you to go fuck yourself, after I kindly did the same.”
Petyr did appreciate the dress. The hem. The neckline. The suggestion. However, his appreciation did not manifest in lingering stares or expanding pupils; Petyr, in fact, seemed to hardly even notice what she was wearing despite always taking great pains to have some comment or another – be it mocking or complimentary – on her stylists’ choices. He understood, then, what the previous night meant in terms of their relationship. In terms of their dynamics. Mentor and victor, and little else.
Spry.
Sansa spoke and a ghost of a smile flickered across Baelish’s visage. Into his pockets both of his hands slid. She was angry. Of course she was angry, though he resented the notion; it was her persistence which had forced his hand. Gentle let downs were, perhaps, not the way of the Stark clan. It was all or nothing, with great big heads filled by swollen pride and a misguided sense of entitlement. In that moment, Petyr recalled images of Eddark Stark, and he actually laughed. Though it was neither a sound of amusement nor mirth, and instead laden with derision, with embitterment, with irritation. His gaze dropped to the same mirrored pool, looked at their rippling reflections. In the water, the light of the crystals dotting her body did, indeed, look like stars, gleaming and shifting, twinkling in facets of blinding white light; Petyr thought of the dossier he’d given her, of line after line of dates stamped in type-face, of absurdly detailed instructions that transformed Sansa into little more than a doll. She would be popular. It would go on for a long time. Maybe forever.
Throughout those trials she would need a friend, though she would not find one in him. This night would mark the end of their rapport, signifying a severance that was perhaps long overdue. Sansa would find the strength to carry on and she would replace him as a mentor to District Seven’s tributes during the Games. An observer of it all might suggest that this had been Baelish’s plan all along: to manipulate Sansa into no longer needing or wanting his presence beside her. Isn’t that what he’d wanted? To be left alone? To be done with the obligation to the Hunger Games in any capacity, but most especially as that of a mentor?
“No,” he replied. “Nothing else.”
To the grotto’s simulacrum he left her, the sound of water trickling echoing in his wake. Baelish thought to leave the gala. There was nothing more to be done. Sansa was prepared, she would take the hand of the sponsor who’d bought her success and do as she was expected to. And that would be that. The beginning of the end. The loss of her person. Cutting through the crowds and heading towards the exit, it was Lapworth who stumbled into his path, grabbing Baelish by the shoulder with a freshly-powdered palm. “You’re not leaving, are you? I require an introduction.”
“I assure you, Horatius, she remembers you,” Baelish drawled. How possibly could she forget? Your odor is unlike any other, the shine of your face, the mesmerizing rippling of your chins as you speak, the absurd way you part your well-oiled hair.
A modest chuckle. “Natural that she would,” Lapworth flattered himself. “She certainty shan’t forget after tonight. I am taking her to Jasmine’s.”
A terrible sinking feeling overcame Petyr. Not only would Sansa be subjected to each and every one of Lapworth’s sordid whims, but there would be an audience present to witness it all. Jasmine’s was a club unlike any other; Sansa would be on display, used voraciously, and the entirely of the Capitol underworld would be privy to it. Those who weren’t would hear about it soon after. Whatever reputation Sansa had as being pure was about to be thoroughly erased. It was that thought which churned through his mind as Lapworth set off across the room to sidle up beside his fiery purchase.
“The stars weep with envy,” he schmoozed, collecting Sansa’s hand up in his to place a wet kiss upon her dainty knuckles. The aviary around her tittered quietly behind laced gloves and feathered bangles, pretending to avert their gazes as though they beheld something somehow scandalous. “Just look at you…” And look Lapworth did. His gaze dropped from head to toe, slowly, taking in every well-tailored inch of her. Rising back up, it lingered on the faint outline of her nipples, being so bold as to reach out and tweak one. More tittering erupted. “I can see how eager you are; you are not alone in your excitement. Go freshen up, my dear. I have arranged quite the evening for us and I am most ready to begin.” The tittering continued.
From across the room Baelish watched. Rarely had he seen such blatant cajoling when not in the privacy of some exclusive establishment. Only one possessed of a reputation such as Lapworth’s would be able to get away with it. Money bought a great deal in the Capitol, but power bought the rest. For many years Lapworth had provided key parachutes which had influenced the outcome of the Hunger Games, and for many years he had reaped the rewards of doing so. Some rumors suggested that Lapworth’s donations had a far less altruistic bent towards them; some believed he was nothing more than a front, a pawn, used only at the behest of Gamemakers or, indeed, of Snow himself. Nothing about the Games seemed incidental – certainly not its winner.
Sansa removed herself from Lapworth’s presence, excusing herself to the restroom at the fat man’s behest. A minute passed. Then two. Then three. Baelish’s mind worked. There was no reason for him to intervene – not really. What did he care if overnight her reputation was transformed into that of a rented whore? If anything, it showed that Seven made good on its promises. During his time in the Capitol Baelish had turned a blind eye to hundreds, if not thousands, of disgusting injustices; none had rendered him with a solid weight in his stomach, or a tingle at the back of his throat…
“Get out,” Baelish snapped at the poor woman at the sink who delicately painted a silvery smear onto her lips. Aghast, she did at she was so rudely bid, though not without an indignant series of huffs and puffs. Baelish pressed a hand to the women’s door behind her, preventing anyone else from entering. His eyes found Sansa. “I want you to do as I say. No questions. No hows or whys. Just listen to me and do as I say.” A pause, as though he was gauging her understanding of such simpleton instructions. “You’re going to leave, quietly, through the side entrance. Speak to no one, say no goodbyes, don’t collect your coat, just leave. You’re going to go straight back to your hotel room and stay there the rest of the night.”
There was a flash of pink where Baelish’s tongue darted out to wet his lips, and then he was gone, leaving the restroom as suddenly as he’d come. When she eventually followed suit, she’d observe Baelish’s hand upon Lapworth’s arm, guiding him across the room engaged in a hushed, private conversation.
Perhaps her resentment fell unfairly. Sansa’s worldview still allowed for the merits of trying: she had tried to seduce him, he had tried to succumb. Someone more temperate in nature would acknowledge the effort and move on, seek out a partner better suited to their appetites. But she had felt his cheek along her thigh, twined her tongue with his in a desperate hunt for solace; so lacking in romantic experience, the girl balked to think such intimacy could vanish over the course of a single night. There had to be more, she reasoned, than a final, callous banishment.
No. Nothing else. Quite clearly, Baelish disagreed.
Ignorance did grant one kindness, however. Where the elder Victor looked down across the years, saw hundreds, perhaps thousands of faceless suitors all promised an evening with Seven’s rubied prize, she had no real notion of what future trials awaited. Talk of months or years remained an abstraction; that neat little list alone preoccupied her thoughts, reducing Sansa’s world down to the immediate weeks in which her company was required. Incapable of even conceiving such a fate, she never once veered toward panic or despair.
There was no goodbye, no thanks. As Petyr walked away she too slipped back into the crowd. Meeting Lapworth seemed an event best undertaken with witnesses as subtle buffer. No one noticed her subdued manner, how smiles came just a moment to slowly, or if they did then all were kind enough to blame a mentor’s interruption for her reticence. Meanwhile Sansa fought to rearrange what would now constitute normalcy in her days — there would be Tatty and the team, of course, alongside luncheons and suppers and galas…and the ever-present list. But no friends. No familiar faces from home with whom she could enjoy a few silent moments, no respite from the constant strangeness which permeated the Capitol. Would it ever feel passe? Could you ever shift so smoothly from poverty to plenty, chips of wood to chips of glass, without going mad? Without turning cold?
She smelled him before he ever spoke. A veritable smog of cologne enveloped Lapworth, necessary to mask the faint whiff of lavatory — antiseptic and rotten, both — one could not help but note when standing right beside him. All around her the crowd parted, in deference to the man’s station as much as his girth, though none saw any need for privacy once he had waddled up. “I spent hours sifting through dresses,” Sansa espoused with a doe-like fluttering of lashes. There had only been the one. “My team thought I would faint from worry.” Over his attentions. She took on the very picture of innocence, smiling close-lipped but broad, eyes downcast, shoulder bowed slightly forward as Lapworth invited all in attendance to delight in his good fortune. The girl reasoned that he might not amount to so terrible a person as those impartial black letters would suggest. Flattery and consideration benefited even the least attractive men, their physical shortcomings compensated for with a measure of chivalry found superfluous in handsomer suitors.
I could find something here, something to hold to…
Brief pain stung at her chest, a wasp’s bite smothered in laughter. Then her smile was truly strained. Lapworth, then, did not delude himself into believing his quarry’s mutual affection. Where others indulged their fantasy of willing seduction, promising themselves that they stood apart from the raucous crowd enough to catch the Stark girl’s genuine rapport, this man admitted to himself — and everyone else present — that here stood a living, breathing service. Bought and paid for, collection time now due. “Of course. I need only a moment.” In a rustle of jewels, she vanished.
His claim staked, no one waylaid her on the brief journey, even those of comparable wealth and influence submitting to Lapworth’s blatant assertion of ownership. Several spacious stalls ran along one wall of the restroom; at the far end stood the largest, wordlessly placed there for the use of only the most esteemed guests. Sansa locked herself inside. It was a miniature lounge unto itself, large enough for a small sofa beside the sink and countertop stacked high with fluffy white towels. Sitting heavily amongst overstuffed cushions she felt the familiar, unwelcome press of tears in her throat. Their burning, prickling insistence reminded her of Petyr’s whiskey, the sofa of his own; then a veritable flood of unrelated memories, all tied to Seven, to home, washed over Sansa. A flush bloomed across her chest, her breathing turned heavier and ragged. But she did not cry.
Sansa guessed that she had five, perhaps ten minutes of privacy allowed. No one here spent moments in the lavatory, and a Victor primping herself for a night of astronomical value would want to ensure nary a hair had slipped out of place. Women shuffled in and out, the door swishing on well-oiled hinges. When Petyr stepped inside there was no mistaking his voice. At first she thought Lapworth had complained of her delay, sent an emissary to fetch her. All the squawking of a captured bird suggested he spoke to someone in the common area instead, though Sansa still waited until the door shut with a far more testy finality before slipping out from her sanctuary.
Catching Petyr’s stare, she felt queerly proud of her dry, unreddened eyes.
Shock held her tongue, not even a nod indicating that yes, she understood. Baelish wanted her to leave, to sneak out, ostensibly leaving behind her corpulent sponsor. It made so little sense that gratitude did not even register, yet he spoke so authoritatively Sansa offered no bleating resistance. She did open her mouth as he left, managing no more than a sharp pull of breath before the door swung shut again, leaving her to stand, flabbergasted, in an empty washroom.
But she did as she was told, shaking free from the fog of confusion to slink along silk-draped walls and duck out through a small door clearly meant for waitstaff and other undistinguished attendees. Her driver looked thoroughly surprised at his fare’s return; no doubt the man had been provided a list similar to hers, although every intimate detail would be replaced with expectations regarding her movements throughout the city. Nonetheless he coaxed the engine to life with a gentle purr, polite enough to not even inquire after her missing coat. Though Baelish made no mention of her hotel she entered that secretly as well. At last, in a suite’s expansive privacy, questions began to materialize.
Had Lapworth changed his mind? Had she made some fatal error? Or had Petyr somehow, miraculously, intervened? Were her duties now alleviated? Sansa’s stomach growled. She had eaten no more than the night previous but dared not call down to the kitchens. Baelish had spoken to her with such urgency, such heat, the girl felt any deviation from his thin instructions might somehow result in disaster. Instead she resolved to wait, still clad in that glittering frock so coveted by Lapworth, perched on one corner of her sickeningly large bed. For after so abrupt a meeting, Petyr had to return and explain.
Hadn’t he?
Petyr popped his thumb into his mouth, sucking off the remnants of whatever crumb or juice had been left behind after making up Sansa’s goodie bag. In an instant, his appetite had shifted from the peach between Sansa’s legs to the spread of food he’d ordered in her interest. He didn’t feel guilty. Not when he heard her slip from the bed onto the floor, not when her footsteps padded across the plush carpet to stand behind him, not when her hands smoothed up his back and around his midsection in an affectation of a lover’s intimate embrace. The bag crinkled in his grasp as he rolled it up, plopping it atop the cart, and shifting just in time to waylay roving hands as they sought to pry beneath the waistband of his pants. For half a second he thought about letting her continue. She felt warm and soft pressed against him. She was pliant and willing – more than willing. He knew how good she would feel, all of the little sounds she would make. He knew she’d pour herself into him, he knew that her desperation to forget would make her perform even better. He knew she would be wild, unbridled, different than all the other times. Part of him, oh, part of him wanted very much to let her seek sanctuary in him. But he knew better.
“Stop.”
That was clear enough, wasn’t it? It left little to be deciphered, little to be interpreted. Stop. Her grasp on him loosened as he turned, navigating her arms as though he were some dancer caught in a pirouette, one of her wrists shackled in his fingers. “You’re not staying here.” It wasn’t angry, it was simply firm, concise, no hidden warnings concealed by a tone that told her I’m no longer interested. All clichés and tropes of men fleeing from anything even remotely resembling something meaningful aside, what had changed in the last handful of seconds that had put him so suddenly off of her? Fingers uncurled from her wrist, freeing her, and a too-amiable smile appeared on his face. “I hate sharing a bed.” Hadn’t they shared a bed before? In the train coming back from the Capitol? Without event that evening had passed, no tossing and turning, no fits of snoring, no night terrors shrieking out to awake one or the other. They had coexisted in that cabin just fine. More than fine. It was a poor excuse, then, though perhaps merciful all the same. All the more irritating to a girl who loathed the idea of mercy.
“Anyway,” he continued, “that’s not rest.” The smile veered wry. “Getting fucked isn’t resting. And you do need to rest. Because tomorrow you’ll be doing a lot of that – getting fucked. And he’s not gonna want some tired old nag with dark circles under her eyes. He’s gonna want some spry spring filly all ready to go, again…and again…and again.” Petyr lifted a hand, captured her chin between the pads of thumb and fore. He made her look at him, his gaze taking on a condescending tilt as it washed over her face. “You can come see me after if you want.” It wandered down the slope of her nose, settling on her lips. “You can tell me all about it. Every vulgar detail. And maybe if you’re not too sore…” There, he released her chin, the tip of his pointer finger dragging down her jawline.
“Nah. I’m not much for sloppy seconds.”
She didn’t want kindness. She didn’t want mercy. Nor did she desire cruelty – but it was cruelty which the mentor knew would scatter the rabble from his porch and send the flame-haired girl back to her own room. They were all the same. Easy to provoke, easy to bait and control with one emotion or another; it was just a matter of finding out which emotion was best to use. Sansa Stark: pride, anger, attachment.
She left, as any reasonable girl would have done. Petyr scavenged through the remnants of the food, more than scavenged the contents of his mini bar, and wrapped himself up in that bed she’d wanted to share. The next day was more of the same, although he knew it would be prudent of him to make some sort of an appearance at the gala which had been set aside for Sansa to make good on her debt to Lapworth. Not for Sansa’s sake, but for the client; it was he who’d struck the bargain, after all, and he who would make certain the encounter was worth every ounce of riches Lapworth had liquidated in order to purchase his auburn prize a life-saving parachute.
* * * * *
“Is she a virgin, do you think?” Lapworth slowly stirred a neon pink cocktail with a decadently spiraled swizzle stick.
Baelish shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his mouth taking on the curve of a frown as he followed Lapworth’s gaze across the room to where Sansa stood, surrounded by a throng of sycophants, dressed in nude-colored fabric that made her look as though she was clad in nothing but glittering stars – just as Lapworth’s dossier had requested. “Maybe.”
Lapworth’s mouth began to purse before stretching into a grisly smile, his jowls rippling as he broke into a deep, throaty chuckle, laughing as though Baelish had just told a good joke. “It’s no true matter, but I am curious,” the word lilts through the air like some sort of song. “She seems so fragile. How much will she be able to take? I am quite robust, you know.”
Baelish smiled a thin smile.
The fat sod continued for the better part of an hour, regaling Petyr with tales of his former conquests, gesticulating ever more flamboyantly with each new woman. Lapworth’s hands were utterly bereft of any sort of wrinkle, replaced instead by that sort of queasy stretched-out look one gets after too many surgeries; Baelish found himself wondering why he had bothered to give himself child-like hands while leaving his face a sagging mess. After Lapworth had slurped down four or five of the candied drinks, he excused himself to the lavatory, and Baelish took the opportunity to find Sansa.
“A word?” It was a smile too charming for one of Baelish’s ilk, but it was enough to cut through the fog of crooning. At the small of Sansa’s back she’d be able to feel the pressure of his touch. “Very quick, I promise.” The group surrounding her tittered and flapped, more like a gaggle of birds than a cluster of people, and Baelish led Sansa away, towards a corner of the room which had been carved out to resemble some tropical grotto, a shimmer of water gliding elegantly down a rocky wall surrounded by waxy fronds.
“He’s about primed,” Baelish said, skimming a finger through the stream of water, sending little droplets flying every which way. She knew who he meant. “How do you feel?”
Like a candle flame caught up in a torrential downpour, the remnants of her arousal guttered out with that single, staccato syllable. Stop. Sansa unwound her arms, stepped back in concert with his turn, gathering up every tendril of proffered intimacy and packing it away. For one terrible moment a girl’s mind intervened: Baelish never gave you that key. He only wanted you here to talk. You’ve changed. You’re different. Terrible. One of them now. Nothing less fantastic could explain that vacillation between consent and denial, desire and disdain. Pain twisted delicate features into a mask of hurt so impenetrable that surely for a breath Petyr would fear an outburst of tears. To her credit, however, Sansa plumbed the depths of her pride; brushing aside his refusal as though it were a reasonable possibility, she carefully smoothed every line, rearranging her expression back to something resembling ambivalence.
Baelish’s directive would have served well enough to banish the girl. It was a choice she sought and a choice he refused to make. She had never forced him into the act, though certainly she had cajoled; nothing in their prior encounters warranted how callously he reminded Sansa of her mistake. Yet sometime between her arrival and her final proposition she had left a sensitive underbelly exposed, one painfully suited to the sharpened talons of a man all too aware of his advantage. Fingers capture her before she could back away, wishing only to leave, to flee, a wounded animal who must wait for the sanctuary of its den to lick inflicted wounds. If they failed to suffice then Petyr would neither find satisfaction in their salting. As he spoke Sansa retreated, in mind if not in the flesh, her eyes glazing over, faceted sapphire losing its remarkable depth. A similar look predominated the later hours of parties on her victory tour; when the guests lingered overlong and her thoughts turned to another pair of families, another district that would teeter on starvation’s edge because of her success, her attentions slowly lost their youthful gleam.
Now it vanished in one pulse of her heart, punctuated by the subtle twitch of her chin away from covetous fingers. Gathering her coat took but a moment. Petyr’s key remained pointedly upon the desk where she had set it. So too did the bundle of food, any pretense of kindness ignored under the weight of more recent sentiments. If Baelish expected a farewell, even of the most cursory nature, he would find himself disappointed. Waiting at the door long enough to assure herself no one roamed the halls nearby, Sansa slipped out as wordlessly as she had come, with nary a glance behind.
Her team arrived promptly the next morning, just as an Avox cleared away a scattering of breakfast dishes. Though Tatty said nothing her appraising stare was clear; she took in the bed sheets rumpled only on one side, a pillow arranged vertically amongst the mess as if in her sleep Sansa desired a companion. The Victor had slept without interruption, her room perfectly dark, perfectly silent unless one arranged otherwise, but there lingered about her a faintly haggard air. Her team tutted for a moment yet seemed content to ascribe such a state to last night’s raucous gathering. You’ll get used to it, they crowed. Give yourself a few more days, then you’ll never know how you managed without it!
Unlike her first soiree Baelish never stopped in. Neither would have the team, if not for Lapworth’s promised attendance that evening. Where with any other a minor slip here or there could be overlooked, her date with the ludicrously wealthy — and ludicrously corpulent — donor required flawless execution. It seemed a shame, she thought, to waste such a stunning gown on him. Then again Sansa knew of no one who might appreciate it in the way she desired; after the encounter in his suite, she doubted that Baelish would ever again feature as a sexual figure in her life. Even as she admitted to herself that fact, Sansa evaluated her reflection; six hands fluttered about like drunken magpies, glittering trinkets placed here and there in rapid succession. He would like its hem and neckline, she decided, and the way it clung to every blossoming curve. Yet she suspected that most of all he would enjoy its suggestion, the promise of nudity without actually providing naked flesh for the casual observer’s pleasure.
The perfect dress for a voyeur.
It came as no surprise, then, that Sansa fought her way through more than an hour of compliments and questions, dozens of voices crying out at the brilliance of her stylists before she could reach that coveted central placement in the room. Her host had taken a frenzied approach to their theme — one corner resembled a fairy tale grotto, replete with frolicking mermaids in a pool; another hosted an exotic desert scene painted in jeweled tones; a third recalled an arctic tundra, its snow a tumbling avalanche of diamonds guarded over by petite sprites. Sansa caught no more than glimpses of decor, forever hemmed in by admirers. Hands unclaimed by bodies extended drinks towards her; remembering Baelish’s advice, she took no more than a sip or two before setting them back on a passing tray.
Lapworth remained nowhere to be seen. Petyr, however…
In marked opposition to that last party she would appear notably unimpressed with his arrival. But how could he tell? An exclamation of great warmth greeted him, the girl beaming with grateful acknowledgement, her lips pressing an affectionate kiss to the air several inches beside one cheek. With a sly wink she named him a liar, prone to keeping his poor tribute bogged down in trivialities half the night if she couldn’t escape. Everyone laughed heartily, though never before had Petyr carried a reputation of bureaucratic monotony. It was enough for them to slip away, Sansa mindful of his touch, angling herself away from it, promising a timely flight from his hold to those behind her.
Beside a gurgling waterfall, all that slipped away.
“Spry.” No shimmer in cobalt depths suggested his comments from before had overnight transformed themselves into a private jape. One arm crossed over the other. Sansa had bargained for him to come along, to help. Her need to socialize, however, had dropped precipitously. “Is there something else?” she prompted. “I read over every page, just like you said.” A water droplet arched from the display to one forearm, where the girl flicked it away, back into the pool. Her eyes remained fixated on that faint, crystalline sheen. “I’m sorry Petyr, but unless there’s something new, discussion really isn’t going to make matters go any more smoothly…”
Natural, it was, that some would glamorize the Games. That’s what the Capitol wanted, wasn’t it? To sensationalize their bloodsport? To have it serve as the ultimate form of entertainment all the while serving as a grim reminder that the districts best obey? In some districts the Games were certainly celebrated; that is where you saw the career tributes spring up, training their entire lives for the opportunity to throw themselves into the arena by means of volunteering. It was seen almost as an honor, and there had undoubtedly been some strategy behind that choice, in the beginning. Those districts were granted infinite more Capitol favors, and they therefore had all the reason in the world to continue in wanton servitude. Other districts took far less kindly to the Hunger Games – the ones who went hungry and were forced to sacrifice, year after year, their precious children. It seemed odd that Sansa would play at the Games. Perhaps her privileged upbringing allowed her to separate herself from the brutality, to be desensitized towards it. None of her ilk had ever before been touched, and for what reason did she have to think that would ever change?
Until it had.
Now her life belonged to them. Them. The faceless puppeteers of the Capitol. Petyr wondered if she thought it was half so glamorous as she’d imagined as a child. For even though there was the ever-present shroud of misery draped across her, she could not deny, even now, that it was still glamorous. The world glittered, it flashed, it enchanted and it captivated. Every detail was carved out into some alluring shape, all the better to entice and entrance. A great deal of planning had gone into this gilded facade meant to hide the festering underbelly of the Capitol’s reality, and in that, Snow and the rest were no fools. It was, at times, easy to forget how terrible everything was, even for the survivors who had been at the very center of it.
People like Petyr. People like Sansa.
He’d not had any measure of when he might expect Sansa, though he’d taken a gamble to at least assume that he could. Confirmation came with an unseen smirk when he heard the muted beep and the soft swoosh of the door opening and closing. In good courtesy, he rose to meet her, though it was a far different man than the one she’d last seen at the soiree. Divested of his fine suit and buffed shoes, he greeted her in the most casual of thin white cotton pants and matching tee. He certainly wasn’t going for the seduction angle, then. Not that he’d ever given much thought to his appearance when it came to Sansa; that sort of calculation was given only to social gatherings. A normal girl might be insulted over the idea that he cared not how he looked in front of her, but a smarter one would realize that his lack of care had everything to do with an unspoken level of comfort rather than a true adoption of apathy.
Unlike his interaction with Tatty, Sansa’s greeting of a kiss went unreturned, although she would feel the slide of his fingers along the dip of her waist before she turned to shrug off the monstrosity of her fur coat. Petyr was looking at her. He was looking at her in a way that suggested her concern over him being too tired was entirely unfounded. Sansa peeled away the fluffy overgarment, and gray-green slanted down the powdery iridescence of her gown, settling for a moment at the cinch beneath her breasts. “Not yet,” he murmured, almost absently. The flush of her cheeks he appraised for far longer. It was Sansa’s feminine qualities that Petyr seemed most to enjoy. No doubt it was why he had offhandedly requested she wear skirts or dresses, and why his gaze always lingered on her whenever she was draped in Capitol finery. Oh, he was not immune to those charms. Certainly not. That was the sort of glamour Petyr reveled in, though he wasn’t so foolish as to believe it was real. Petyr had seen the real Sansa, he knew every inch of the real girl hiding beneath layers of fine silk and lace and ribboned sheen.
“Rarely am I too tired to…talk.” An easy smile. Petyr turned away, walking across the room, past the small kitchenette. In his hand he scooped a leather-bound menu. “Did you eat?” Rhetorical. No need to answer; he already knew. The menu unfolded against his palm. “You should eat.” Lazily reading over the hotel’s offerings, he meandered back to her, turning the menu towards her when close enough and letting her have a look. “We’ll get some food into you, then we’ll talk.” It wasn’t firm, but it was still a tone that brooked no argument.
Glamour certainly eased what otherwise would feel like no more than base prostitution. Sequin-spackled gowns, fizzy neon drinks, parties filled to the brim with beautiful forms all created an illusion of choice, one which sponsors gladly indulged. For as much as Victors might wish to forget the loaded pistol at their temple, so too did their admirers enjoy lingering in the fantasy that neither money nor threat of harm compelled a guest’s attention. Both labored under mutual delusion, the system far more fragile than gilded exterior betrayed, its balance threatened by even whispered truth. Certainly her current predicament stood favorable to locked doors and restrained yet lacking practice, Sansa still focused on the seams, edges where reality and act joined, proof of the enslavement granted when crowned a winner of Snow’s game.
In all her imaginings as a child, she arrived in the Capitol by choice, a stunning girl invited to step across those barbed-wire boundaries and grace them with her charm. Though she saw the disparity, the starvation, Sansa believed with puerile faith that it was only passing; surely all the shortages, lengthened hours at the mills came out of necessity, not spite, a misconception furthered by parents’ quiet insistence that their children’s worries remain confined to a single day. Thus, her true flaw lay rooted in a particular sort of naivete: belief in the goodness of others. Too often did Sansa take for granted that their world allowed for such selflessness, surprised — and hurt — time and again when raw survivorship overwhelmed any altruism. Was that what Baelish’s room key represented — charity? Such a thought had not prevented her from coming, moving with the sort of hesitating anticipation often reserved for first meetings. In his home they had settled into a vague routine, the same basic steps followed with little variation. Middling though the room might be by Capitol standards, its effect largely remained one of disconcertion.
Befurred, Sansa felt only a faint pressure from his touch. Turning back however, coat deposited on an obliging chair, she could better take in the casual nature of his dress. In Seven Baelish wore jeans and trousers, nothing so suggestive as the thin material donned now. While grey-green lingered on cinched waist and flushed cheeks, she found herself distracted by the bulge of fabric between his legs. Neither indulged suggestion when in the districts, her change to dresses more a concession to expediency than flirtation. Now silk and ribbons allowed for hints at the girl’s most intimate parts, her dress forever shifting, shimmering back into a semblance of modesty. And Petyr…just like her finery, his lounging fashion seemed an invitation with the faint shadow of hair across his chest, the way his shirt skimmed a lean waist, and how it was quite obvious, yet hardly vulgar, at what rested between his thighs.
Sansa pressed her legs closer together, weight shifting to one hip.
Brows furrowed at talk of food. Ceremony never entered into their ruts. Was that what he wanted, though, a prelude which built gradually into carnal bliss? Sansa preferred such an arrangement — an illusion — despite having swiftly adjusted herself to the spartan, desperate nature of their couplings. Like all the parties which demanded her attention, would they too indulge fantasy? Surely it was harmless, eating a little, taking their time. Smiling more with gaze than lips she took the booklet from outstretched hand, settling primly atop the bed. Beds are so serious. Her stomach flopped pleasantly. Would they, she wondered, do something serious tonight?
“The team will have my head if I can’t fit into tomorrow’s dress,” Sansa murmured. No doubt like the frock would be stitched on, just like the one she wore now; buttons and zippers were so unseemly when used as fastenings alone. Page after page of gourmet offerings spilled across vellum pages, entries in gold ink indicating a guest favorite. One dish alone listed well over a dozen components; little wonder citizens starved, when so much made its way to the Capitol alone. “Maybe just something I could nibble on…fruit? Something easy to share.” Smile turned to playful smirk, menu extended back towards Petyr. “I think its best if you put in the order. Imagine the scandal if someone claimed to have heard Sansa Stark on your phone line after midnight.” A scandal indeed.
Petyr watched the glass rise to her mouth and back down. He let his eyes linger too long on the glossy sheen the spirit had left behind on her lips, waiting for the pink flash of her tongue to dart out and sweep it away. She was good at this, the ruse, the game; it amazed him how quickly she’d taken to giving away her smiles and the ability she possessed in making every person she spoke to feel as though they were the one who interested her the most. Then he thought of her clumsy seduction, and how poor that had been, along with every other encounter thereafter. It was reality she struggled with. Petyr understood that all-too well.
“Three.” So he had been paying attention to her. Quite studiously, at that. “This is number four.” A tilt of his head towards the colorful drink she’d skillfully non-sipped. “Three’s a good number, except you haven’t had any food.” Her prep team had warned her, quite vociferously, that the precise plum-pomegranate shade of her lips would be ruined if she dared partake of food. It would be a tragedy! Did she not see how perfectly the shade offset the highlights of her hair? The faint pink undercurrent of her gown when she turned just so in the light? One member of her team had dramatically claimed she would sooner die than see Sansa’s ruined lips plastered over the pages of tomorrow’s tabloids. Guilt had worked, it seemed. Sansa had eaten nothing. “And I doubt you ate anything at supper, because those harpies never shut up, and judging by your appearance…” Down, his eyes slid, from collarbone to toe, appraising her. Appreciating her. “They spent a long time making you look like this.” It wasn’t so ruthless a barb, if the playful smirk on his face were any indication.
“So maybe hold back, or else you might make some stranger very lucky.” And that’s what they were all hoping for. The drinks, the atmosphere, the music: all of it was carefully manufactured to facilitate a good time for every attending patron. But one patron, and what she did, mattered more than the rest. Every lurking, leering guest at the party hoped to catch Sansa Stark’s interest by the end of the night, so that it was their face that would be headlining the morning’s gossip rags alongside the Victor’s ruined lips. Sansa’s Tawdry Tryst the titles would read, replete with commentary from the next-door neighbor about just how loud the squeals and moans were! It was stories of a similar ilk that Tatty and the prep team had been squawking about all day. That’s how it was done. That’s what the citizens of the Capitol thrived on. Every painful contrivance, anything worth a shock or scandal. The survivors of the Hunger Games provided entertainment fodder for years, even decades, after their victories – something which made them especially valuable commodities to President Snow. Anything that served as a distraction from the real issues – the shortages of food, the flickering lights, the hint of unrest looming just beyond the Capitol’s walls – was a thing that need be protected.
And exploited.
“You’ll be here a while longer yet, and you should probably get some sleep once you leave…but…” Into Baelish’s pocket his hand delved, returning with a small, metallic card. It was thin and speckled with tiny ruby flecks; on the edge a number was engraved. She’d recognize it as a key card to the hotel they were staying in, having been given one earlier by Tatty. Baelish wasn’t staying in an adjoining room, or even on the same floor. Where Sansa had been placed on an upper level in a suite filled to the ceiling with accouterments, gifts, sundries, and luxuries, Baelish had been relegated to what amounted to a peon’s room several floors lower. What begged the question most of all, however, was why Baelish had been given a room at all. Hadn’t he mentioned an apartment at some point in passing? He certainly traveled to the Capitol often enough to warrant having somewhere permanent to stay. Petyr slid the card alongside her drink before abandoning it. “If you feel up to it, you can come by. We can…talk.” There was a quiet air about him, an almost rankling, sly arrogance in the way he said it. The quiet smile playing over his lips did not help, nor did the brush of his fingers at the small of her back, just where the fabric of her gown gave way to skin. It was chilled, that touch, and perhaps all the more electric because of it. Petyr pushed away from the bar, a glass of ice and honey-colored liquid clicking about in his hand as he did.
As a little girl, Sansa adored playing pretend. Robb and Bran would oftentimes oblige with their participation, taking on the part of soldier or king or muttation in a drama that always managed to revolve around a certain flame-haired heroine. She recalled such fantasy easily, slipping into the skin of a young woman with no siblings, no obligations, no nightmares that came creeping in out of the inky dark. Creating a blank canvas onto which any number of desires might be projected required great effort, however, endurance already flagging in this, her first true test. During the tour every moment had been planned and scripted, great swaths of time spent traveling in the relative privacy of a train; public appearances served as mere punctuation, rather than the endless statement Seven’s team now sought to make. Beneath her mask of jubilation lay a girl exhausted and beyond her depth, seeking out those few points of familiarity still within reach.
Sansa looked on her drink with vague suspicion, as though it had conspired with the previous three to intoxicate her. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?” But admiration threaded through murmured inquiry. Clearly he had kept a close eye on his Victor, a surveillance as reassuring as it was puzzling. Baelish guessed correctly about her lack of sustenance as well, a deprivation driven home by half-muttered comments about alterations and physicians, no doubt the sort largely bypassed during her recuperation period after emerging from the Arena. Instead she made do with the tempting smell of stews and roasts, fresh fruit topped with a dozen different sugary creams, piping hot rolls, braised vegetables in shades of orange and green and yellow, surrounded by sweating goblets of rainbow liquids. When she first reached for a plate one of them had the audacity to swat her away. Sansa knew better than to try again. Did she look any slimmer? Had her lips endured the minuscule sips that had become a nervous tic as she circulated? Not once since arriving had she seen a mirror, the expressions of others her only reflection. Baelish’s veered more deliberate than any that came before, stoking heat along the back of her neck, fanning it out along her ribs. “I’m to be their masterpiece,” she confided with a roll of eyes, the wisp of a smile dimpling both cheeks.
It deepened with his advice. For the first time Sansa felt as though they had reached some sort of equilibrium, neither pushing back at the other, a tenuous alliance formed in the space between them. His offered introductions made the girl believe any tryst lay beyond the realm of possibility; so, when a silvery card slid from his pocket across the bar, she could not help her brief astonishment. A blink and it cleared away to careful neutrality; if Petyr watched closely enough to count her drinks, then many other eyes must be taking careful note, seeking any scandal, any weakness, any possibility for more. Without looking she set her fizzy drink atop it, hand curled around the base to almost fully obscure it from view. “I’ll…be certain to remember…” A tremor raced down knobbed spine, belly swooping at the realization that Petyr had managed to reverse her proposition entirely, transforming him into the hunter. Free hand drifted after the man in departure, quickly recalled into a softly curled fist beneath her chin. With neither purse nor pockets she spent the remainder of her evening clutching the key under that same drink, barely touched and discarded at the last possible moment when she at last took her leave some time after midnight.
Sansa rode alone, the driver given no suspiciously new address, her escort and team remaining behind despite the girl’s declaration of exhaustion. Lacquered nails traced card’s edges, a fingerpad ran back and forth over the sequence of numbers telling her precisely where Baelish could be found. The nervousness felt when she first knocked on his door in the Victor’s Village returned ten-fold, for though the players remained the same, everything about them had changed drastically. Would it be a citizen of the Capitol who greeted her, or Seven’s apathetic mentor? Would it make a difference? Could he still make her feel better? The car stopped. Sansa tucked the key into her coat, a voluminous creation of grey and black fur, ludicrously warm for an impending summer. The door opened, a gloved hand extended to ease her onto the sidewalk. When she slipped into a gilded lift it was the button for Petyr’s floor her hand found and his door she soon stood before. A discrete beep and click affirmed the key’s success, Sansa opening the door just enough to slip inside. Like Tatty she greeted him with a kiss to one cheek; unlike their befeathered escort, however, painted lips lingered just at the corner of his, palm brushing down along his ribs, catching at his hip. Pulling back at last, Sansa made to divest herself of cumbersome fur, angled away from him as she spoke. “I hope I haven’t come too late. I worried you might feel too tired to— to talk.” No more than a minute in his company and already her blush had returned, a pink flush entirely unrelated to drink or coat.
It wasn’t quick, that aloofness. It had taken years for him to harden into the man he was now. After his victory, Baelish had been almost optimistic. Returning home he foolishly believed he was to receive something of a heroes welcome. Oh, yes, he’d killed his fellow tribute, but what of it? Only one was ever meant to survive, and if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. No one would ever understand the fear, the desperation, the uncertainty someone felt in the arena – especially someone so young as Baelish had been. Too young to realize what he’d done and why it was so unacceptable. Too young, certainly, to be punished for it. Too young to understand why they hated him for it. She, among them: Catelyn. A girl he’d been too young to love – for what was love? Far too complicated an emotion for a boy! – but whatever he’d felt towards her had been something like love. So much so that he’d been excited to return, to see her smiling face welcoming him back. So confident he’d been that she would return his feelings that when she had done the opposite, when she’d shunned him, he’d been utterly unprepared. One would think that such swift recompense of his treachery would learn a boy well to adapt to his new station, but Baelish, inherently, was not an evil creature. He had taken no pleasure in what he’d done, and he’d lost everything for it.
Natural, that he turned to the Capitol, who celebrated him and welcomed him with the same wide-open arms he’d hoped for from Seven. It was the Capitol where he’d thrived, learning, adapting, growing. Was it any wonder he blended so seamlessly with their world now? Sansa would either do the same, or she would withdraw into herself like others did. There was no middle ground, no normalcy, no happy cottage life with smiling, giggling faces. That was not the sort of life she was destined for. Not anymore.
She was destined for a lifetime-long masquerade of swooping hands and tired palaver, of luxurious nights paid for by monsters she could not stand, of decadent drinks and desserts and dresses. Like the one she wore now. It kept beckoning his stare throughout the night, shades of champagne, ivory, and silver swishing in and out of his peripheral vision as she worked the room. Baelish was well-versed in the art of subtlety. For hours he could watch someone without ever giving it away. With Sansa, Petyr exercised no such caution. Perhaps it was as much about strategy – she was supposed to be fresh, young, beautiful, desirable, after all – as it was about personal appreciation, but his gaze, like pyrite, and dangerously close to a leer, latched onto milky skin and auburn curls, following her about the room like a well-practiced sycophant. But they all were, weren’t they? Every eye in the room was focused on Sansa. She’d been gone long enough for her appearance that evening to be seen as new again, novel and unpolluted. She glinted like a diamond, pale silk clinging to equally pale curves, the tumble of red down her back making her look like some sort of virgin ready to be sacrificed, and certainly that’s exactly what her prep team had envisioned. They were priming her, whetting the palates of those Capitol citizens who’d not yet paid the price to book Panem’s newest darling. Their success relied upon Sansa being spoken of, thought of, paid for as much as possible. In this, they had not failed her.
Around the gala she was passed, from man to woman, host to hostess, guest after guest being introduced to her in a flurry of names, colors, and fragrances. Each one of them were besotted, proclaiming to have been her most ardent supporter throughout the Games. Sansa did well, Baelish thought, as she had during her victory tour. The more you do it the less it matters. Such advice applied to most everything. With enough experience, everything became easy. By the time she drifted towards the bar, however, he could tell that it was beginning to wear on her. The brush of hand to hand was felt; immediately, he knew it was intentional. A sidelong glance was given, so brief as to ascertain her proximity before it was gone. Baelish finished his conversation, and made his way to the bar, sidling up beside Sansa, the cloth of his suit sliding against her arm.
“Not tonight,” he replied, low enough to be heard through the clamoring current of conversation surrounding them. “Tomorrow, maybe.” Though had Lapworth indeed been at the soiree, he almost certainly would have insisted on bringing the siren back with him to hear her songs. At her next comment his brows knitted together. With a tilt of his head he regarded her, a flush high on her cheeks, a fizzy drink pinched between two fingers. His gaze grew more narrow, discerning, as it shifted over her face. Was she accosting him? “How many of those have you had?” The brush of the hand hadn’t been merely to get his attention, then. Incorrectly, he’d assumed that their conversation on the train would have changed things. A distraction was needed even more, he supposed, when up to your knees in rancid Capitol slime.
But she was being sloppy.
“You’ll have your pick of them,” he stated, speaking to the distraction he thought of in his head. She didn’t need context to know what he meant. “If you see someone you like, I can help you arrange it. Or I can introduce you to some of your own ilk.” Not everyone in the Capitol was a leech. Only most. There were younger gentlemen, and ladies too, who would be happy to show Sansa around, give her an extended tour of the clubs and gatherings that were more suited to someone her age. Sex need not even be involved – merely distraction, in the many chemical forms in which it came, and even some of the organic sort.
In that regard, Sansa profited and suffered in equal measure. Though still a child, she was one of the oldest tossed into that year’s arena — beyond Careers, there were few who could intimidate her by size alone, and her team could intimate at a burgeoning womanhood beneath that innocent exterior. It not only earned her sponsors, like Lapworth; many younger tributes also avoided her from the moment they began running. Johanna Mason had won not long ago, deceit fresh despite her eschewing all contact with those beyond District Seven following the victory. Red hair and gentle eyes might conceal a similar threat, and by the time such a possibility seemed remote, many of her competitors had already perished. Yet age combined with a family to whom she might return had rendered Sansa more immovable than her mentor. What cause had she to find solace in the Capitol, when already an appealing life seemed to lie in wait amongst the pines? The illusion died slowly, its decay impeded by the buffer of grateful siblings, of routine, making an inevitable collapse all the more bone-rattling in its impact.
For tonight, however, she had recovered. In the car one of her team slipped over a nondescript pill, followed by promises of more, which cleared head and vision alike. Drowsiness banished, Sansa navigated the crowd with ease, if not pleasure, fielding compliments and questions with variations on the same laugh, the same bat of lashes, the same coy touch to a guest’s arm. Several times she looked for Petyr in the crush, a black stiletto rising out of iridian waves, but he never appeared. Tatty rendered him practicably unnecessary, facilitating dozens of introductions, though she offered none of the intangible comfort Sansa might draw from his presence. Instead he seemed to have meant his offer on the train: suggestions, instructions, those he would offer. Not support, nor friendship, nor the wordless sympathy of one who understood the injustices visited upon her.
Distance, however, did nothing to dampen her desire. Sparked by the day’s stresses, the revelation of dapper grooming forgone since that missed train southward, unceasing attention to her gown only stoked Sansa’s hunger. Had he not once opined the benefits of wearing a dress? Layers of silk and ribbon a great deal finer than the cotton worn in Seven accentuated her figure, swirling bodice stitched precisely so as to draw attention to her bosom without veering into vulgarity. Shades pale and paler allowed copper locks to shine under the sweeping, flashing lights, bringing out interspersed threads of gold and bronze. More than once she felt hands toy with the hem of her skirt, oftentimes accompanied by crooning remarks as to the craftsmanship, though Sansa knew such compliments only masked a desire to go further, to be invited to explore how well the garment was made. It only called to mind Petyr’s hands, broad and strong, sweeping up a thigh to clutch possessively at her bottom. Each recollection led to a discomforted wriggle, the scrap of lace deemed her underthings sullied; imagination raced far ahead of reality, so that when Sansa’s fingers brushed his she had convinced herself Baelish would abscond away with no protest.
A hum, noncommittal, answered him. By now her things would have been transferred to the hotel Tatty booked, papers neatly stack and unread on a desk, closet stuffed with the fashions her team had gathered, bathroom lined with all manner of potions; on the bed her suitcase would sit, open but otherwise undisturbed, the room’s impeccable design leaving no space for her familial trinkets. If ever she were curious Sansa could return to the packet he turned over, learn precisely who she would be meeting, the manner of acquaintance they expected. Now she wished only for an excuse to talk. To more than talk. “I— I don’t know.” Brows wrinkled down at the faceted crystal. Sansa didn’t think she was drunk. Was she? Tempting as numbness sounded, such a state endangered her far more than it helped. She took a sip, smiling a compliment at its creator, yet when the glass came back to the bar it remained as full as before.
“No.” Had they come to the Capitol a week earlier, or when Baelish first meant to, his suggestion would have rung as an insult. Now, Sansa heard it as she did the words in his letter: an offer of as much safety and comfort as he could provide. Dismayed but not entirely deterred, the girl’s arm remained close against him in a faint press that perhaps even Petyr would fail to notice. “I’ll have my fill of strangers; I don’t want another one to entertain tonight.” Besides, a line needed to exist. If the agenda lurking at her hotel comprised a set of demands, parties and gowns an expensive diversion, then pleasurable distractions would have to come from an entirely different source. Nothing in the Capitol could touch her life in Seven, a resolution which, coupled with her proposition, seemed to plant Baelish firmly in the latter’s realm.
