Is that what Sansa hoped for? A reward? Night after night she regaled men of the Vale and men of the North, baiting them with witticisms and beauty alike, all in the name of some unspoken reward? Petyr would find this secretly amusing, if he knew. What sort of reward?, he would wonder, playing over ideas quietly in his head – some decidedly more sordid than others. Did she still hunger for one thing and one thing only? Winterfell? He’d given it to her, hadn’t he? It sat in the frozen North, its roots deeply and forever embedded in hard earth, crumbled but hardly erased. It waited for her, a ruin of everything she’d once cared about. What, then, did she except to be given by carefully dispensing her favor? Certainly not another marriage, since she had refused that notion outright. Petyr looked at Sansa, a dull smile returning her quip. The worth of her desires. Had Petyr not delivered to her everything he had promised her? Had those promises not been built on her wants? Her desires? She gave him nothing, no hint of mirth, and this both bothered and pleased Petyr. Something inside of him grew cold and withered at her perfected distance. It had been quite a while since they had talked, truly spoken to one another, and it would be longer still yet.
Confirmation that she trusted him, that she would heed his requests prompted a brief drop of his gaze to the snow, his chin tilted downward, the smile slightly less dull. “Good.” With a firm dig of his heels into the flanks of his horse, a flurry of freshly-fallen snow was kicked up; the beast lifted hooves high, a drift of marmoreal white far too much of a burden. “I will leave you to it then, my lady. Do try not to lose yourself in all of this snow, mm?” It was a smirk as superficial as the farewell which led his mount around her and away, back up the very same rise from whence they’d come. At the top of the hill, Baelish demanded a guard tail him back to the Gates, leaving Sansa with only two to watch over her in the snowy grove settled comfortably in the shadow of the Giant’s Lance.
Whatever cryptic trials and hardships Petyr had spoken to, none of any special mention appeared. It was more of the same: prattling conversation and swooning dances, too much wine or too little. The Lord Baelish disappeared back into the detritus of his solar, a hundred different letters strewn across his desk and tucked into his shelves. Only at meals did he join the festivities; an odd thing, Myranda Royce idly commented on one evening, for a man who had paid so very much to host them all.
Four mornings after Petyr had joined her for a ride, the sky was swollen with the promise of an impending storm. It was a velvet stretch of deep grey, the sun’s warmth well-concealed behind wispy screens of winter cloud. From his window Petyr watched as Sansa left the stables, as she did most every morning. There was a certain tenseness to his muscles, a tightness to his hands which made penning his missives quite irritating. Long fingers massaged over hand and palm, one and then the other, as Sansa and her escorts rode off into the dreary grey, until all that was left was a long, anonymous trail of tracks left in the snow.
“‘Tis beginning to snow, m'lady,” a fully fledged knight of the Vale by the name of Ser Malcolm called out to Sansa. Surely, she had already noticed. From the sky drifted down thick, wet flakes, most unpleasant, and in no time at all the party would be soaked through, or at least such was the tone of voice and urgency that Ser Malcolm seemed to impart with his warning. “We would do best to head back; I will not be accused of the Lady catching an illness!” He was a seasoned ser, with faded blonde hair that hung down over a heavy brow. Age had caused his skin to sag and his eyes to darken, but it was easy enough to see how, in his youth, he would have been considered handsome. One of his sons had been quite taken with Sansa, but was a shy fellow, and had barely spoken to her. This had annoyed Ser Malcolm intensely, for there was nothing he enjoyed less than wintering at someone else’s home. Most especially when it was under the hogwash of courting some tart. He missed his wife and the spices she used in the stew she made for him. Definitively, he had also decided that he did not approve of all of the to-do surrounding this Stark girl. A lovely lass she was, but he’d seen lovelier.
Sansa’s mare was stretching its neck, long and thick and corded over with muscle, to nibble at frost-laden buds which had never chanced at opening. When the fiery-haired lass did not immediately respond, Ser Malcolm sighed, a puff of frosty air escaping from between long, thin lips. “My lady–” he called again, this time more firmly.
The silence which followed was of an eerie sort, and lasted for no longer than a second. But it was crisp, clear, utterly unforgettable. No doubt it was only further punctuated by the pandemonium which erupted just after. The screaming whistle of an arrow, shot exquisitely through Ser Malcolm’s throat. The rearing of his horse, the crunch of his body falling into snow, the cries of the other two men as they drew their steel and cast alerted looks this way and that. But there was no sense to it all, for you see, in no time at all they were cast down in a similar manner, with bright red blood spurting from their necks and seeping into the Vale-emblazoned tunics colored that lovely Arryn blue.
It was about such a time that Sansa’s own horse, instantly smelling a richness of copper and iron in the air, began to panic as well, doing that dance that horses are prone to when they are spooked, their eyes wide and black and glossed over by animal instinct. It cried out – a horrible sound – and Sansa may have noticed nothing at all except for the force of gravity pulling her down, down, down from her mount and into the hands of…what? They were astonishingly adept, those hands, thick and calloused and wrapped in straps of well-worn leather with remnants of fur. The hands reached around her, ensnaring her, covering her mouth and half of her face with their largeness, stifling her cries, and carrying her away. Far, far away. Across rivers and across great fields, until the shade of the great mountains swallowed them whole.
The snow continued to fall, thicker and wetter, erasing away opportunistic tracks, dusting over the bodies of three fallen men of the Vale.
One could rarely expect rewards for deeds which often lay cloaked in deceitful shrouds, true motive and meaning tucked away in favor of any small advantage gained. Sansa guessed as best she could at the Lord’s final agenda; perhaps her expected recompense, then, grew from a failure to thwart unspoken plans. Yet here Baelish stumbled into self-same trap, man and girl anticipating an excess of honesty to match their own obfuscation. So long as he spoke in riddles, ill-defined omens of hardship alongside firm entreaties for trust, she could no more offer him gratitude than he might grant the particular reassurance of security for which Sansa hungered. Not since the evening in Arryn’s library had she spoken frankly to any listener. It was a long passage of time for a girl preoccupied with truths and lies, once so adamant in whispered tones that Petyr was not really her father. No matter the depth of her longing, though, Sansa would greet obscurity in kind.
Even as he looked down the Lord doubtless missed how one gloved hand twitched, as if its Lady might have expected a warm clasp or knuckled kiss before departure. Her own smile of farewell fell altogether softer across porcelain features, summer’s gaze following his journey over drifts brightened by a rising sun until light and distance swallowed the silhouetted trio. Sansa lingered. This place, so full of life by its promise of return, seemed far holier than the abandoned godswood high above. More of the North endured within those stoic pines than ever she had felt amongst the desiccated branches of a dying weirwood. Tempting, it was, to slip down from her mount and recreate that rimy monument to home.
Without Petyr, however, she would doubtless be forced to capitulate to a guard’s chill before finishing. The girl departed her frozen hamlet on a sigh, hoarfrost and evergreen sharp and familiar between her ribs.
Back within Nestor Royce’s keep no trials assailed her. At first she wondered if Baelish’s diminished presence was what prompted their snowy interlude. Yet he never troubled himself with forewarning extended travels or unannounced guests; a few days of extended labor hardly mattered. Even as his watchful eye apparently waned — though not once did Sansa believe he was truly unaware of all her polite dalliances — she maintained the mummer’s farce. A ride at dawn before breaking her fast with Myranda, their mornings spent indoors playing at cards or cyvasse until the afternoon sun had warmed the courtyard enough to invite an audience for young, ambitious knights.
All was well, if it did not border on tedium after so much repetition.
Ser Malcolm did not usually attend her daily jaunts; whether it was herself or the cold he misliked Sansa could not discern, yet he groused just often enough to mark himself an unpalatable companion. She had noticed the gathering storm that morning from her windows, ice melting and reforming as a fire within battled against the chill without. While she did not relish the notion of returning half-frozen and wet through, neither did the possibility that others might playfully decry how easily Winter put off Stark’s heiress appeal. A short expedition, then. To that little copse Petyr had introduced her to and no further; they would surely return before a blizzard began in earnest.
It was there her mount dallied, allowing its rider to contemplate nearby stream once more. Opalescent shimmers tricked one into thinking trout still frolicked beneath the roiling surface, though most had long since fled to warmer waters. A grimace, unseen, met the knight’s vexing plea. Leather-sheathed fingers tightened on her reins, Sansa intending to wheel about with sharp assurances as to his immunityfrom blame.
As she turned in her saddle the stream’s babble swelled to an impossible volume, a roar filling the silent vaccum.
What left her throat was instead a hoarse, strangled sound halfway between scream and gasp. She could not reconcile the carmine flowers blooming across a white canvas with her guard’s begrudging watch. A full understanding had not yet dawned when Malcolm’s two companions fell as well, stains seeping down their chests, turning falcons and moons from cream to red. A great lady knew how to behave at tournaments. But this was no tourney, the men who lay dying upon the ground no strangers forgotten by spectators and bards alike. Sansa knew them, as surely as she knew no one now stood between herself and fourth arrow.
That knowledge came too late.
Beneath her the horse began to panic, head tossing as breath left its nostrils in great snorts of steam. The beast paid no heed to the digging of her heels or the pull of a bit. As Sansa opened her mouth to scream, call out for help from the distant Gates, the animal seemed to throw her, though she never flew up, only down, down, down. A man — or men — had pulled her from the saddle, the stink of sour milk and rotted meat clinging to the rags they wore. Valiantly she struggled, screaming against a dirt-streaked palm, reaching out to claw indiscriminately even as a muscled arm caught her up in a great bear hug. Under velvet skirts both legs twisted and thrashed to no avail. A lady did not fight or resist, her strengths well beyond the scope of physical confrontation. Even had her suspicions arisen sooner, Sansa still possessed no hope of rescue.
Desperate, she tried to bite down on the hand which stifled every cry, teeth catching a tiny fold of skin. Whoever held her grunted, a mumbled curse and renewed grip his only acknowledgement of her success. Sansa tried again. Now the hold around her middle tightened, each breath a painful struggle as a greasy thumb and forefinger pinched at her nose.
It felt just like falling asleep, only she had never felt so afraid under her furs. They were carrying her somewhere, and quickly. As her sight turned hazy, to grey, to black, Sansa caught the faintest glimpse of the Giant’s Lance, disappearing from view.
Petyr watched her, though it was no hard-eyed stare or lust-addled gaze. It was a quiet look. Not subtle, but quiet. There was something unfamiliar about Sansa allowing him to witness her emotions, and certainly that was just so. Their language was one of masks, any shred of genuine character usually tucked away neatly behind the edges of personas carefully worn. These masks had, at times, shifted and veered crooked, perhaps once or twice they’d even been set aside entirely for the span of a sentence or conversation. Now, he believed that Sansa appeared as both what she desired and what she was, a rare moment of complimentary design.
Petyr wondered, idly, if Sansa trusted him.
“I rarely suffer anything without a reason.” A smile, as flippant and meandering as the stream before them. A deep sense of relief settled over him. Nothing had the potential to change things more than time and circumstance, and Petyr had let plenty of both come between him and his once-ward since that night in the library. Professing a somewhat idle interest to be joined in marriage amounted to very little when the alternatives remained an unsavory unknown. It amounted to even less when the interest had not been actively, or even passively, returned. Petyr had, in fact, appeared as a figure of objection. No acknowledgment from a man who had taken great liberties in the past could only be read by the common eye as objection.
Is that what Sansa believed? That Petyr Baelish had rejected her? Worse – did she no longer care if he had?
A sidelong glance was cast towards the Arryn-clad guard astride their horses some distance away. “Hardship, my lady, is the very essence of many a woman’s life. You are no exception to that, and I fear that my gifts may not always seem kind.” With a tilt to his reins, Petyr rounded his horse until they were side by side, so near that there was barely a breath spaced between their legs. “I must tell you, Sansa, that your hardships are not finished. I ask that you weather them with grace, and the knowledge that whatever you may endure will not be in vain – that I have taken every care to abide by your…thoughts, as it were.” There was a gravity to his expression, his tone. “What you want is very important to me.” More than once he had made similar declarations to her, to less than agreeable results. Harrold the Heir, Winterfell, Alayne Stone. “In whatever trials may come – I ask that you trust I have your best interests in mind.”
There it was again, that word with so many levels of meaning – did she trust him? How many countless before her had placed, and misplaced, their trust in Littlefinger to their ultimate downfall or even demise? And yet…had he not proven to her that, when it came to her, he seemed to hold true to his word? Not for any purpose of altruism, certainly; Petyr Baelish was a selfish man whose motives always traced back to his own personal preference and ambition. It meant, perhaps, that finally their interests were as close to aligned as they might ever be. Petyr’s eyes shifted over Sansa’s face, that lovely face framed by a rustle of fur and waves of red. Would that they were not accompanied by a coterie of guard, he should very much like to reach out and touch her face, prop two fingers beneath her chin, bid her to look at him, to drink in what he was saying and know it was no idle banter.
Ah, but she had always been a remarkably clever girl.
For all that she had wanted to say and share in those weeks of silence, Sansa found little difficulty in holding her tongue now. So long as Baelish presented his input as purposefully withheld the girl hungered for his advice, framed every decision in terms of pleasing him, lying awake in night’s small black hours fretting over how the Lord might grin or grimace at her conduct. Yet beside him, enveloped in natural seclusion, patience prevailed. A waggish smile could not wholly disguise spoken truths: Littlefinger took no course of action, no matter its apparent triviality, without certain assurances as to his personal benefit. He no more relished the chilly vista than she did the ceaseless entertainments demanded behind Royce’s walls, yet each endured them in hopes of a reward.
Sansa could find no benefit, however, within the unspoken farce of courtship. No man offered any greater advantage than her fallen Falcon, that much Baelish knew before a single raven left its perch. Why, then, would he squander the girl’s time on matters whose resolution could barely advance her cause, and at worst inspire further difficulties? She could only assume it was the time which he desired most. And for what? In isolation uncertainty reigned, news coming only from Randa’s salacious gossip or the whispers of those who traveled from beyond the Vale. Sansa stood no more capable of surmising the Lord’s personal intentions than she did sifting free the truth from rumors of what disasters had befallen the other six kingdoms. After her candlelit confession garnered no favorable response her sentiments shifted from shame, to fear, to anger, to an aloof nonchalance encapsulating a very real hurt at its core.Though she could not bring herself to believe this barrage of suitors meant Petyr hoped to cast her off, Sansa had thought the man’s greed — if not his skewed affections — would manifest itself in a more reliable fashion.
Did his gifts seem cruel? Tully eyes failed to meet their wayward benefactor, instead captivated by a folded cloak. The lie of Alayne had proven necessary — and yet he could have chosen another to wear those stones. Sansa brushed such thoughts aside. Marillion had not been his doing, nor Lysa and her paranoia, nor poor little Robert’s ills. And Petyr had capitulated to her begging over certain inevitabilities with Harrold; she had been frightened, petulant, queerly protective of that which had never truly been her own, but he took precautions nonetheless. Now, all those men just awakening in the keep behind them proved her hardships had not ended.
Mention of her thoughts — her feelings, her wishes, her request — jerked the girl’s chin up as though it rested upon a string. Could he truly mean…? “You have already demonstrated the worth of my desires, my lord.” Even in profile Baelish would see how carefully placid her expression remained: brows relaxed, mouth soft, gaze cast just to the side in sole indication of rapt attention. Leather creaked, a gloved hand wrapping tightly about gathered reins as she thought. The game continued — it had never ended — with wolf and bird perhaps as close to co-conspirators as ever their actions dictated. Voluminous tufts of fur hid the traitorous swell along her neck, pulse quickening to consider that somewhere before her lay manipulations worthy of forewarning, whose aim pointed straight to the heart of her impassioned pleas.
Petyr would not trouble himself so over another husband; a brief meeting in his solar, before the fire, would suffice.
“I shall,” she answered, solemn, eyes uplifted with no aid from slim fingers imprisoned at his side. “I do.” Oh, it was ever in his self-interest that greatest faith lay, though at last Baelish’s ambitions seemed to align themselves with hers. Sansa could not prevent a thrill of apprehension from racing across her heart, a flash of steely light manifest in azurine gaze. Hardship. Hardly a thing to relish, but she would endure its trials with grace, if only these shadowed acts would bring some satisfaction at their end.
Snow crunched under hoof, the air crisp enough to send puffs of frost from velvety equine nostrils. More than once he had watched her in those early hours from his window and the view it afforded him. Bundled in fur, all gray where she ought be red. She trailed off, morning after morning, into the boundless white, flanked afar by Eyrie guard, but never so close that she might not be allowed a sense of freedom or escape. Such was the case now; horses of the Eyrie and their riders kept a wide distance from Baelish and Stark, far greater even than when she normally rode alone.
“There is always some satisfaction to be found in travel,” he replied vaguely, clear that he did not intend to share with her the reason from his trip or what it entailed. “Though you are well aware I find no pleasure in the cold.” Petyr had said the same thing that evening in the library, had used it as a reason as to why he would not join her in the very activity they engaged in now. It meant that he wanted her away from the castle, away from any prying eyes or ears. There were gentle flakes drifting down all around them, unobtrusive and light. The woods were quiet, the silence broken only occasionally by the warble of a bird. When they neared a river, the sounds of the water flowing over rocks and through cages of ice seemed almost deafening. It was there Petyr veered towards, taking a subtle arc towards a copse of trees nestled near the stream.
“You are in your element here, are you not?” Petyr smiled; it seemed genuine. “Snow and wood and cheeks pinked by snow. Winter becomes you, my lady.” There was a certain fondness with which he regarded her, familiar, but not untoward. She looked much like she had that day in the Eyrie’s courtyard, snowflakes in her hair, surfing waves of red. The Lord held both a partiality and a dread for that day. There was a similar feeling teeming in the pit of his stomach now. A limbo stationed between recklessness and logic. A lack of control. Petyr cinched his horse’s reins, the dark beast protesting with a jerk of its head as it drummed to a halt. “To these Lords and their provincial views there is no creature lovelier than a Stark heralding winter’s coming. I do not imagine there are many who can boast of beholding that now.” Was she truly the last? So far as anyone knew. Manufactured likenesses aside – even the pretender Arya Stark was said to have been slain in the siege of Winterfell. Sansa was the only remaining vestige of a time-honored lineage; what she represented to the North and Vale alike was more than her simple claim. Had she felt it? The weight of it, now that Baelish no longer served as a buffer or bastion?
“I am interested in hearing your thoughts.” The guards who had escorted them remained at a fair distance; his words were carried away by the current of the stream’s wending and bubbling. “Do you favor any of them?” Petyr need not clarify who he meant or in what regard. The charade had been transparent enough to all involved. Was this the reason Petyr had invaded her morning ritual? To hear simple opinions on which trumped up Ser or Lord she might humor in a pairing? Surely not. “You have bewitched them…the lot of them.” Poorly, Petyr concealed some measure of malcontent at that notion. For half a second his mouth pulled into something like a grimace. “You will have your pick.” Petyr turned to her, his fingers lacing idly into the black of his horse’s mane. There was expectancy there, as though he waited for her to thank him, to show her gratitude at his obvious generosity. That precious gift of choice – was it not what she had always wanted?
She had hoped to remain inscrutable, provide no meaningful hint towards her disposition until Baelish made clear the reason for his uncharacteristic expedition. Perhaps therein lay the crux of disadvantage between wolf and bird — where Sansa often strove to conceal, the lord achieved such obfuscation effortlessly. So the faintest scowl followed her knowing smirk — of course he detests the cold — a delay of that familiarity he had already chosen to deny. A nightingale’s song rebounded sharply off frozen boughs, notes tumbling one over the other in such rapid succession one could never guess in which tree it nested. The girl’s face craned skyward, eyes roving curiously over snow-logged limbs. She had never explored this particular copse before, not wanting the dark, jagged fingers of pine to beckon her guards closer, preferring more open spaces to roam.
Though weighed by expectation the silence between them carried no tension. That first glower Sansa intended solely for herself, their meandering journey otherwise unmarred. “I have never known a true Winter.” Summer snows carried with them more nuisance than menace, seemingly gifted by the gods for chilly battles in the courtyard and castles built of ice. The Winter faced now would look upon North and South alike with implacable hunger, great drifts of white which would undoubtedly swallow all with ravenous abandon. Sansa felt not at all in her element against such force warned against in family words, yet now, when flakes still fell softly, when poetry lingered in a graying world, she could pretend.
You’re crusted over with snow like some little bear cub… Distant words rushed down from mountain’s peak. But your face is flushed and you can scarcely breath…Let me warm you… Gloved hands curled tighter about her reins. In that dark, abandoned courtyard lay sole anchor to the truth, a moment whose impetuousness Sansa still believed despite every other machination in the following months. Lacking now was that hunger, instead glazed over with a shimmering veneer of civility. Did he mean to unbalance her? Remind her? Uncertainty often bred praise, compliments and flattery perfectly suitable diversions from hesitation. Yet the moment passed, silent, paltry words on how dashing or at ease he looked lost as she drew her mount to a halt. “Nor I.” Loss forever clung in burdensome reminder to her heart, a tumor whose pressing weight she could forget only by consigning thoughts of it to the same small place in which she kept memories of Marillion and Joffrey and Lysa. Hungry looks from gathered suitors threatened to bring it to the fore, staved off by sheer will alone.
Though she had learned of these men’s histories and hopes, made each of them feel welcome in her new home, still none had managed to distinguish themselves in any meaningful way. “My thoughts— ?” Surely Petyr could see her egalitarian treatment for what it was: a rejection of them all, or at the very least a refusal to offer any preference that might spur action. A flutter of red and Sansa glanced towards him, watching as remnants of displeasure faded from pursed lips. “You have gathered an impressive court,” she murmured, steel swathed in soft words. “But my thoughts have not changed.” For what could any of them offer her, that she had not already chosen to see in the Mockingbird? A Northern marriage brought no great advantage, a father’s lords already pledged by right of blood. The Vale hovered on a precipice of disarray after Harrold’s sacrifice, any choice within its families as much a gamble as a calculation. Downward she gazed, thumb tracing along a howling wolf’s maw with deliberate idleness. Baelish had gone to great trouble, great expense, to gather so many choices in convenient reach. Was she ungrateful? The river nearly swallowed her next words whole, a pensive stare lending pale features the faintest cast of melancholy in dawn’s gentle light. “Unless you have a need to hear them again, my lord, then I fear you have suffered the cold for naught.”
There were no further discussions on the matters discussed that evening in the high library of the Eyrie. Not of suitors, not of gowns, not of a whispered notion of a pairing between Baelish and Stark. They were left behind, like the keep itself, sealed away in the tomb of winter. The last remaining inhabitants of the Vale’s ancestral castle traveled down the narrow paths slicked by ice, seeking respite from winter at the Gates of the Moon. Entrenched in frost, the pale blue of Arryn’s house still whipped in carnal flag atop the Falcon Tower. As High as Honor. Ensconced there, Petyr’s priorities seemed to take on a drastic shift as he busied himself with Nestor Royce and the readying of the Gates to serve as proper host. Sansa Stark – Widow Stark – was left to her own devices.
Ravens were sent out daily, entire flocks released into the winter snows, which came down in a never-ending shower of soft, white flakes that made every tree and trellis glitter as though they had been meticulously crafted from rare crystal. The food was better, the company better still; gone were the days of long, empty tables fashioned only for two. Baelish dined with Nestor Royce and his family, along with other important men who seemed to arrive more by the day from far and obscure houses – Melcolm and Grafton, Longthorpe and Pryor – until the great hall was filled by men, its table seating all of them with no room to spare. At great expense these men were fed and housed, the torchlights of the Gates gleaming brightly at all hours, the washerwomen murmuring under their breaths as to the extent of their exhaustive duties.
Petyr Baelish wooed the Vale. He plied its Lords with Dornish Red and spiced meats, he curried their favor with gifts of rare spices, and in whispers they spoke of trading tracts of fertile land. Debts were bought, or rather, gambled away at all hours of the night to howls of wine-fueled laughter. Grievances were forgiven. All matters were under consideration for a man who no longer had the face of the Young Falcon to glide forward with. Harrold’s death affected all.
Sansa, most of all.
They loved her, as they always had. They loved her red hair and her white-as-snow skin. They loved how she smiled and how well-spoken she was. They loved her clever tongue and her demure elegance. Most of all, they loved her grief. Petyr watched her, always from behind the rim of a cup or with a slanted glance, observing her, observing who observed her. Nights were spent recounting every look, tucking away each iota of interest expressed, shuffling about expectations and mulling over which conversation would need be next had. This continued for days. Weeks. Only with the arrival of two men in particular, however – Gawen Glover and Brandon Tallhart – did the plans of Petyr Baelish become abundantly clear.
So many nights spent locked alone in his solar, letters written and ink-stained fingers wiped carefully clean so that he might stare into the hypnotic undulation of his hearth. He had not dismissed the idea of marrying Sansa to a Northerner. It seemed as though he had not even dismissed the idea of marrying Sansa to another Ser from the Vale. All who hoped to charm the Princess of Winterfell were humored; none were turned away with disappointment. Whatever game Petyr was playing at was had entirely at Sansa’s expense. Though he did not instruct her one way or the other, never pulling her aside to gauge whom she liked best, never hinting as to what color gown she ought don, or whose hand she ought take first in dance. It was left entirely to her, which could only mean that Petyr cared not at all who she picked, that it was all a ruse, a grand pageantry and nothing more, held for the benefit of those in attendance.
Petyr distanced himself from Sansa in a visible way, no longer holding conversations as Sansa’s benefactor, or on her behalf. It was no longer the Mockingbird who was posed to broker a marriage between Sansa and whomever she chose. That duty was hers alone. This illusion of agency was essential. Though it was, to be sure, only an illusion.
One evening a scroll was brought to him still rolled, a royal seal pressed in wax unbroken. Curious looks and furtive whispers followed the Lord as he excused himself from the comfortable revelry to read it in private. Under the cover of dawn the following morning, shadows swooping with gusts of frosted breath, Petyr Baelish left the Gates of the Moon. He did not return for seven days. On the night of, as the peach-colored alpenglow died and darkness tightened, the Lord returned with a flurry of fresh, powdery snow. The dull horns heralded him, the gatehouse alight with the churning of frozen chains. Some hours later, as the sconces began to smolder and the halls emptied of conversation in favor of bed and rest, Petyr climbed the stone steps to Sansa’s room. Flanked on either side by guards, for never would he be flippant enough to grant her that reprieve. A soft rapping of knuckles fell to her door, so soft it would not have awoken someone already asleep, but may have stole the attention of one who lingered in that space of tenuous wakefulness.
She did not come to answer. The Lord left.
The morning after was soft and warm. Aurulent rays fell in ethereal shimmers across the snow-blanketed hills and forested valleys below. “My lady!” Petyr called. Ah, and it was early enough still for there to be sunflower yellow planes cast upon the highest peaks of the Eyrie, sparking so bright they nearly blinded. In such a light she looked almost unfamiliar, so used he had grown to seeing her only by way of torch and hearth, swathed in a fine array of vibrant gowns – any color she pleased. Now she sat atop her horse, ready to ride into the snowy wood. The copper in her hair shone brightly, bleeding red, bleeding ruby. Tired of the snow she had become. Tired, no doubt, of the constant swirl of suitors and regurgitated pleasantries. An escape seemed only natural. How lovely she looked in her furred cloak and tall boots. The reins of her horse had been stitched with tiny direwolves in an elegant gray. “My lady,” he repeated, nearing her, the long black rider’s cloak sweeping about his calves. On his hands were fitted firmly a set of fine leather gloves. “Would you care for company?” It didn’t seem her answer made any difference; already his horse was being led out of the stables, saddle and tackle ready as though he’d previously planned to interrupt her. “It is a lovely day for it.”
Riding? Or company?
Abandonment by her protector seemed less dire when inflicted at the lower altitude of Lord Royce’s Gates, for there Lysa’s jealousy and paranoia had never spread. Serving girls and stable boys bustled about with the importance of those who found purpose in their tasks. Knights trained in sword and bow, squires huddled beneath frost-bitten furs, grumbling with resentment at every errand. Sansa sometimes found herself seated before an open window, eyes closed as she tried to force the stream of cries and shouts and chatter into a river leading northward, leading home, to no avail. Although the lower keep pulsed with life absent at mountain’s peak, the lady’s pursuits remained much the same, unchanged in all save perhaps the company entertained. She entered no negotiations, suggested no strategies, invited no visitors of her own. A honored guest the widowed Lady Stark was — but a guest nonetheless.
Amidst such growing vibrancy few would think to question the natural distance between Baelish and Stark. With both Harrold’s ascendancy and the farce of Alayne Stone brought to an end their public ties grew tenuous, continuation excused perhaps by custom or chivalrous intent. She had confided in no one the secret of their candlelit rendezvous and as she settled into yet another home, Sansa wondered if her proposition had not been some mad dream, a hallucination spun by the exhausted mind of one constantly in search of control. How foolish, to reveal just what the Mockingbird might receive if he asked it! And yet as callers first trickled, then flooded through Royce’s courtyard the impact of a midnight entreaty lessened, until she truly did believe her honesty changed none of the Lord’s shadowed plans.
Made tentative by both a husband’s recent death and her guide’s stalwart silence, she granted no one her special favor. A careful observer might note that where one knight was granted a particularly dazzling smile, a minor lord enjoyed the pleasure of an encouraging hand upon his arm. Still another heard her chiming laugh, whilst his friend would later brag of the long dance he shared with Lady Sansa that evening. Beneath her parity lurked an artistry of grace — every name and sigil remembered, dozens of individual conversations recalled upon second meeting, each first-born son and squire and land-holding guest made to feel as though it was he, and he alone, with whom Sansa Stark most desired to spend her time. When courtly matters turned towards, less feminine pastimes, gambling and intoxication and lewd conduct, what exhaustion she felt after taking her leave fell swift and heavy upon the girl. A startling apathy settled upon her as well; in striving to please all comers, Sansa found no spirit left for pleasing herself.
Riding provided a rare, much cherished respite. At Winterfell Arya’s superior skills had soured any enthusiasm she might have nurtured as a young girl; under Cersei’s watchful eye she could enjoy little more than a trot about cobbled yards; and high above the Vale of Arryn horses had no place. Only now, whilst the snows drifted soft and slow from greying skies, could Sansa enjoy the freedom of a saddle and reins. She rode with neither purpose nor expectation, ranging so far as blue-swathed guards allowed. Indeed, only after the arrival of Glover and Tallhart did the ruby-haired wolf grant any calculation at all to her relaxing jaunts.
You ride as prettily as a Southroner, Gawen said in greeting one afternoon. Though he helped her from the saddle, smiling, the condemnation did not fall upon deaf ears. For all the love they bore still Sansa remained an idea, an ideal, to those gathered. A beautiful pale face framed in waves of red, riverine eyes that could inspire singers, ancient blood from which kings might rise. A Daughter of the North…suspiciously cloaked in southron ways.
She took to riding at every sunrise then, venturing out in longer and longer expeditions as she tried to summon from memory Hullen’s lessons, the praise Harwin sang of Arya and their Aunt Lyanna. Glover’s words ought to have meant nothing. Far more grievous insults had assailed the Stark girl and garnered only polite, enduring silence, yet this — this festered. Lannister, Stone, and Hardyng were names discarded as readily as yesterday’s gowns, temporary hardships which would never wholly swallow the truth. She was a Stark, and could allow no question of it any longer.
Already absent in all but form, Baelish’s departure passed with no apparent detriment to his former ward. Every day she rode, every night she entertained with the unfailing courtesy of a noble hostess. Yet even so total an occupation did not prevent Sansa from mulling over the timing of such a missive, the speed with which he answered it, nor the emblem raised in waxen seal. Such exertions left the girl understandably spent, however, despite her curiosity; a true, deep slumber masked the Lord’s hushed request for an audience upon his return.
Caught unawares, she was then, when on the following morn an ebon-cloaked Baelish came jauntily striding across the yard. Surprise registered in the faint ‘oh’ of her mouth, caught on frigid inhalation, and how blue rings contracted around the black pinpricks of her pupils. Did he notice that she sat straighter now, those finely-stitched reins held with an imperious ease rather than the faint tension of one fearing a tumble? “You have missed several fine days in the Vale, Lord Baelish. It would be shameful of you to forgo another.” She would not, could not refuse him. Did Petyr mean to confide in her at last? Sansa smiled down at the stable boy as he brought the Lord’s horse up beside hers. “I did not know you had returned,” she told him. “You found satisfaction in your travels, I trust?” No sooner was he settled than Sansa dug a gentle heel into her mount. They trotted from the keep at a comfortable pace, slow enough that she could not withstand the persistent urge to cast Tully eyes in sidelong glances toward unexpected company, unreadable in patrician profile.
No thread of vixen existed within the fibers woven together to create Sansa Stark. Not an ounce of smoldering seductress could be found mixed into her essence. It was not that Petyr preferred the wide-eyed tentative quivering of a naif, it was simply that he preferred Sansa, no matter the qualities which might be found abundantly or not at all. Even when she had mistakenly discovered him in the throes of self-satisfaction, she had not exuded the confident airs of one who had true intent. Sansa stumbled through her interactions with Petyr, and their physical interactions especially. Early days of solicited kissed were met with a faltering grace, escalating to a no less faltering hand or breath or shift of hips. And in that, Petyr was no fool, all-too aware of her aversion to him in many ways. It was not romanticism or affinity which drove her decision, her admission. Did he care enough for her to allow himself to be placed at such a disadvantage?
Did he?
The unyielding pull of her was more problematic to the man than any other factor he had yet been forced to consider. More worrying still was his willingness to submit to her. At the faintest implication that she might consider him, him, all plans were mentally scattered to the wind, rearranged in favor of…what?
She did not lean into his touch, nor did she offer him a smile whose inception came from any genuine place. It was a compromise she presented, a bargain, a give and take, no less calculating than her hand had been as it pumped over his flesh. Petyr regarded the practiced curve of her mouth with hollow pride. She had learned well, blossoming under his tutelage certainly, though her skills were her own, natural, uninstructible. Petyr had succeeded in teaching her, above all, how best to manipulate him. She knew what he wanted, and had wrapped the rope about his neck with nary a scrap of regret.
He would have it no other way.
The kiss was familiar enough; it was the sort of kiss delivered with rote and concision that he’d received so many times before, as her Lord Father. Though he had neither asked for it nor expected it, and perhaps therein was the difference. Is that what she proposed? A partnership of stiff, glancing touches, an ever-present yearning for more chasing a desire to withhold? The hand at her hip rose to her face, fingers sliding across skin, the pad of his thumb caressing the apple of her cheek. There was an icy chill, passed with the bands of his rings. For a moment it seemed as though he intended to return her kiss, the way his gaze shifted over her face, flickering over her mouth before meeting her eyes with unwavering candor. Oh, his want was obvious, though his hold on her remained gentle, almost fragile.
A clipped ‘hm’ echoed in his chest, his throat. A brief, contemplative tour of her victory. Were she to have blinked, she might have missed the twitch at one corner of his mouth. At her cheek his thumb continued to slowly stroke. How he would like to lean into her and claim her mouth, lift her skirts, drink her in. No one would come to the library. Against the shelves of dusty tomes he could push her, ravage her, seal her contract with binding kiss. The heat of them would fog the winter glass, taint the pages of Vale histories.
But his hand dropped, two fingers ghosting a line down her throat to trace the frilled edge of her bodice, before falling away. A more glaring imperative, greater even than his want for her, was the need to regain control.
“We must acquire new gowns for you.” Against a pattern of dark lace, just below her threaded hands, the back of his fingers brushed. “These simply will not do.” His gaze was tilted down, surveying the slender length of her. “I do believe you have mourned quite enough – wouldn’t you agree?”
It was not simply confusion of sentiment that restrained her kiss; Sansa wanted to know what Petyr would do. A test of them both. He would not ravage the girl, surely, but respond in kind? Gather her against him where none could see, show what relief he felt she would rather join with the Mockingbird than seek out another green boy to woo and shackle. Having never thought of Baelish as a romantic partner, such a hurried gesture could never begin to explore the notion. But I could, Sansa resolved, his lips unmoving beneath hers. I could give him sons and be safe.
When enough time had passed, though, and still he did not rise up to answer questions unspoken, the girl pulled away. Remaining close enough that her breath would fall warm and humid on his chin, tiny flecks of silver and steel reflecting candlelight in her gaze, Sansa waited. She wished to close her eyes, lean into the caress and take comfort from Petyr’s loose grasp. How long since last someone touched her, held her, without artifice or agenda? Even Harrold, poor boy, had touched her more like a thing than a woman, as if by cupping her waist he held Winterfell itself in his palm.
Kiss me. The corners of her eyes tensed with anticipation. Show me something, anything. He had once, in the godswood; he might yet do so again. Slippery as an eel, Sansa felt the reins of power tangling in her fingers. Baelish hungered for a great many things: wealth and lands, recognition and control, her; she could see all of his appetites as if through smoked glass, vague forms hovering in the middle distance, recognizable but faint. What remained uncertain was precisely what he lusted after most of all — were it Sansa, then he should have seized her, claimed her, left no doubt that this confession of hers was favorably heard. Yet Baelish only stared, surely watching as expectation turned to anxiety, to disappointment, to embarrassment.
She dared speak the truth, granting him advantages unforeseen, only to stand rejected. Had she misjudged Petyr so egregiously? Was she still such a child, to believe one shared moment of transparency might possibly grant some peace? Now Sansa wanted only to flee, to lock herself in her room until the hot, thick lump of shame choking her dissipated.
But she had given Petyr enough already; Sansa could not, would not let him see her more vulnerable still. It was settled then: like so many before her, the Stark girl would be foisted off on whomever’s lands and titles and gold proved most worthy, all the intimacy of months past set aside in favor of what best suited him.
Fool girl! To ever think they stood as partners, or that Baelish desired them to. Nothing remained for her to fall back upon, no secret knowledge or quiet confidence, all Sansa’s assumptions scattered like dry leaves across Arryn’s dusty shelves. Only courtesy, that first and strongest shirt of mail that had weighed so heavily for so long atop her shoulders, returned to her then.
”Might I wear any color I please?” she murmured. There was no blood to conceal now. “For I daresay no suitor wishes to see his betrothed clad in remembrance of another.” Stepping back, away from his reach, her fingers clutched more tightly at one another. “But perhaps we might discuss this another evening, my lord; I grow quite weary. If you would excuse me?” Sansa offered no elbow or hand to take, merely turned back towards the narrow shaft of light from an open door, and left.
Far from what she believed, Petyr found no advantage in her confession. She held no airs of desperation, gave no indication that it was he who had the upper hand. Only by the scarce threads of one able to ignore emotion. Did she truly not see how much control she had? In her hands, her destiny shifted, like water, seeping through the tiny spaces between fingers, so slowly it would be easy to think it was not escaping at all, until her fingers stared back at her, dry where they ought be wet. Clever, she was, to want for Baelish. With her own eyes she had seen how easy it was to move him, to negotiate terms, to get what she wanted. Finally, she was beginning to learn how to use the weapon perched at her shoulder, beginning to see the usefulness of it, rather than simply feeling the heavy press of its weight.
She had to know that Baelish had no true interest in peace. Chaos is where the Mockingbird thrived, able to sinuously weave between the cleaves of axes and sheaves of arrows, planting seeds in soil fertilized by the ruin of others. Stability was dangerous for one who thrived on entropy and the tumult of the realm. There was much yet to be done before Petyr Baelish would ever agree to the sort of serenity that Sansa Stark dreamed about. He would make her Queen, to be certain, but her lands would bleed. They would call it a red winter, far bloodier than any one wedding. The snow would run ruby beneath her rule, before she saw the verdant shimmer of spring. No, he would not beat her nor keep her in discomfort, but did she, could she, understand what he would do? It was not only her claim which Baelish found so very enticing, but her name. Ah! What a lovely, unexpected garnish the last Stark would prove for her staunch Northern legacy.
“Nothing carries inevitability, my dear,” Petyr corrected, his smile unctuous. “And you will find I am rather adept at handling smallfolk.” Naturally, of course; it was not difficult to remember just how far the Lord had climbed from his spit of rocks and sheep dung. It was not the smallfolk who gave him pause when it came to Harrenhal: confident, he was, that he would be able to sway the Riverlands – and most especially with a Tully in tow. There were other issues with the ruinous keep which kept him at bay – not the least of which were certain superstitions, as unthinkable as it might seem. There was still the matter of procuring heirs that must needs be addressed, before foot was to be set in Harren the Black’s cursed keep.
But all of that would take time.
Less and less, she spoke, and Baelish shifted his eyes enough that it was she he looked at, by way of reflection, rather than the endless abyss of snow and ice pouring down from the Eyrie tower. Even through glass she was a vision, smooth and pale, framed by a halo of shocking red. No, he did not agree, though he failed to see how her simply admitting that she might have entertained the notion of him posing as suitor constituted any sort of pact to be entered into. It merely provided another avenue that might otherwise be explored. To accept would be foolish at such a point. There were people who would need mollifying first, Northern Sers to whom Baelish had planted the seed of Sansa Stark’s hand in marriage. There were at least a dozen affairs which would need to be wrapped up and ushered aside. No, no, he did not agree, could not agree, unless he wished to provoke the insatiable rage of the Vale and the North both.
Even now, there were men who rode astride their steeds Southward with the hopes of catching the fair lady’s eye. They would need to be dealt with, carefully. A situation would need to arise, something which painted the Lord Baelish in a more favorable light, one in which it would be understandable that the young Stark girl would accept him as a husband. A problematic stratagem, for a relationship which had been advertised so heavily as paternal.
“Do you find yourself so awakened by the written word?” he posed, smiling wryly at her through window’s mirror. A rustle of brocade and he faced her directly. “Or something else, perhaps?” At her waist she would feel the brush of his palm before it settled there in the natural dip. “I would be happy to escort you.” Was he so quick to be rid of her? Ah, but there were so many letters which needed to be penned, at once, with such news having only just dawned. Petyr’s mind ran amok with the conversations he would need to have – and conversations he would need to stifle.
“Mayhaps my lady could take a book to keep her company?” Nothing so lurid as accounts of Aegon and his wives, if his tone were to be believed. The subtle stroking of his thumb along her gown’s delicate embroidering, however, told another tale.
Sansa hated to think of a match as using him or taking advantage, no matter what truth the matter held. Prettier terms, like strategy or logic appealed to her more. And such words were not lies: the Lord Protector had ample gold and enviable friendships, as well as a keen mind for the Game she would not hone for years yet. Setting aside whatever strange intimacy of flesh and mind had blossomed between them, Sansa knew ‘twas better to keep the Mockingbird tethered at her side with vows of matrimony than risk his flight elsewhere. Not that wives fared well under Lord Baelish’s care. But she was not her aunt, devoted blindly to the man a slight little boy had become. Oh, Sansa saw his faults, every treacherous pitfall contained therein — or at least enough to be wary.
“Nothing?” Half-raised mouth betrayed her skepticism. “Only very little, perhaps.” Surety of outcome, such as the kind Baelish almost constantly nurtured, could only come from a sense of the inevitable. Petyr could not alter a man’s nature or the fundamental core of him bequeathed at birth; he could, however, rely upon them. Northern pride, a desperate want for stability in the Riverlands, suspicion in the Vale: with the quiet endorsement of Sansa Stark buoying him, Baelish needed little else. “As I never was,” she murmured, teasing smile falling away. Perhaps if she had not been so frightened after the king’s betrayal, Sansa might have known how to sway the commons in her favor. Would it have mattered, all those faceless souls in Fleabottom crying out the Stark girl’s name instead of Margaery’s? Would it have helped her, or Robb?
She wondered also what Baelish saw reflected back at him in ice-blue glass. Though he spoke rarely and often in abstract terms of her time as Joffrey’s plaything, Sansa knew the Lord was not oblivious to vicious treatment by royal and guard alike. In his shadow, with the helpful ruse of bastardy granting her added spirit, the girl strove to grow away from the bruises and disappointments of her past. And yet, of all those around Sansa know, only he could still see them. Indelible marks that sometimes left her shivering in the face of change, that inspired loyalty or disdain with equal vehemence. All signs of a child’s mind and heart, though ones she sought to swiftly smother. Was it that frightened girl Petyr saw reflected back at him, Sansa wondered. Could that be the reason for his ambivalence?
Some part of it surely lay in the knights and lords she knew he had already parleyed with in regards to her hand. Northerners particularly met such offers with enthusiasm. The girl purported to be her sister — Arya! In Winterfell! To think! — had not only fled the keep with one of the Bolton bastard’s pets, but was chased by whispers of deception. If Lord Roose had indeed presented some whore’s whelp as the binding tie between his house and the northern seat then no hope remained unto him; meanwhile, liege lords held captive by vows to Lannister-appointed warden still desired their Stark. Sansa’s wish for familiarity, for comfort, for control only emphasized lingering immaturity.
And no man had need of that.
Little wonder he failed to care or even flinch at her admission. As a girl she was a pawn, a thing to be moved from square to square upon the board; as a woman, however, Petyr might take such matters with more seriousness. Sansa gave him the sort of thankful smile oft bestowed 'pon Harrold; he would know it well. They played the game more directly now, with one another, no less meaningful for a deceptively smaller scale. Atop her bodice, ten slender fingers laced in a lady’s own working of armor. Sansa did not step into the grazing embrace, nor did she make to brush it aside.
“Or something else, perhaps.” Sansa had never played the coy innocent with him before — she simply was. Men expected experience, womanly wiles; their patronage at Baelish’s establishments affirmed as much. Though until now her lack of genuine guile seemed enticement enough, Sansa had no means of knowing whether it was the naif or the vixen he truly desired. Before contemplation could give too great a pause, she leant forward, bridging what little distance remained between them to press her lips in chaste, simple kiss to his.
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Sansa’s road ended at Winterfell.
Were she to speak the words aloud, what would the Mockingbird think of such a song? Finality; the grim reality of it. Where he had always, in his mind, revered the Stark girl for having a certain cleverness, a natural curiosity and instinct so indicative of an intelligent mind, a part of him knew, of course, that her ambition stretched only so far. In truth, she had little at all. What aspirations she had centered only around regaining a broken house, not so much as a right but so that she could best remember and honor her family, whose bones were scattered throughout Winterfell, their legacy now resting in the pale hands of a girl. A girl and her mentor.
Why did he do it? There were no notions of romance to consider; Petyr Baelish was far too pragmatic for that. Even if she had an undeniable hold on him, a sort of control he’d not granted anyone since he’d succumbed to the foolishness and innocence of boyhood. Sansa was not blind; Baelish used her for her claim, to advance his own cause, though what that was still remained cloaked in shadow. Petyr knew that she knew. The dance, then, was one of equal parts trust and manipulation, each skating a fine line of using and allowing to be used. Time would tell who stood to lose the most, or if the gains would be equal for both.
It was a certainty that Petyr’s road did not end with the Northern keep Sansa so cherished and named home.
Perhaps this was why she said yes. Only entwining the pair further could truly ensure that their path would be of unvarying value for both. Though it assumed that Sansa had a confidence that Petyr was not prepared to dispose of her as he had Lysa. As he had Harrold. As he had any number of people whose worth had simply…expired. Did the hunger slumbering in that gray-green gaze of his mean she was protected from his shifting wiles? Desire was a fickle thing, changing as often as the winds in their frantic direction. Love…ah! Did the Lord Baelish love Sansa Stark? Could she take the risk that he didn’t?
Petyr watched her blush flare hotly with a detached amusement. He knew what she meant, of course. Obliquity was the style, and Sansa Stark was not one who took well to vulgarity besides. How possibly could he tell her how many hours he would spend between her legs, ensuring her deepest satisfaction, if allowed? Conducive to nothing. They were thoughts like breath, at once formed and expelled to the great vastness, serving no one. But she was lovely, in her modesty, in her shyness. Caught in her own tangle of indiscretion. No words came from the Lord who took a great satisfaction in simply beholding the rosy hue of her face, her averted gaze, the natural instincts of a girl who still knew not quite how to bandy words of scandal. She turned away, feigning interest in some dusty tome, and Petyr felt a queer sense of pride. He could not tell if the entire thing had been a ruse. Something meant to bait him.
“Avoiding conflict entirely would be ideal,” he replied, neither addressing nor avoiding the statement. How many lives had Petyr Baelish saved with a twist of his tongue? How many had he ruined? Words were a potent weapon, and one he had historically been quite skilled at wielding. There were those still in the North to whom he might call upon should he need; he had not spent so much time collecting wards and buying up debts for nothing. If only Sansa were able to see the amassed horde of galleys and triremes sitting in the crystal harbors of Braavos. If only she knew under whose fingers they had been plucked from Northern houses. If only she knew how truly ill-equipped for war the North was as a whole, and how large a part Petyr Baelish had intentionally played in it. Under siege the North would fall with very little effort. Who better might that serve than a man with no armies at his back to command?
Sansa spoke no. A simple word, without so much as a breath’s hesitation. No. She would not have welcomed Baelish as a suitor. Why would she? Petyr’s mouth slanted crooked. At the very least she spared him the condescending laugh Catelyn might have paired with such a statement, as if to further inure him to the folly of his feelings. She stared at him; she stood a marble figure, firelight shimmering over carved cheeks and hollowed eyes, far too dark for his liking. A shoulder lifted, as though what would follow was something flippant, no more than a lyrical note in some silly song. Yes.
It was a game, of course. Everything between them was. Sansa either baited him or she willingly sacrificed an important piece. Looking back at her, he found his thoughts were jumbled. His greatest weakness, perhaps, being that he seemed perpetually unable to have clarity in his thoughts when so near to her, when tempted by the vision of Sansa Stark. Of course he seemed a preferable match when one looked to strangers she had never meant. Petyr did not take her confession as indication that she held any measure of affection for him; Sansa, too, was a pragmatic creature, able to shunt away emotions in favor of doing what best benefited her. For a long time, Baelish had watched her do it, marveled, even, at her self realization and control, at the ability to tune everything out and settle on the straightest path towards success.
A laugh, soft, no more than a breath truly, escaped him as he neared her, closing the distance between them, lifting a hand to take loose hold of auburn waves spilling over her shoulder. It was her hair he was looking at, much like that day so long ago at the King’s Tournament, seemingly transfixed by its color. Indeed, his mouth grew tighter, and Sansa could almost bear witness to the thoughts running amok in his head as Petyr shuffled about ideas, pieces, schemes and knowledges. Plans formulating and scattering in the space of a breath. The pad of his thumb shifted over the strands of her hair, moving them about.
For a long while, he was quiet.
“Your mother’s mother was a Whent.”
Silvery-green shifted to meet shadowed blue; in them the roguish glint of fortuity gleamed with each wending waver of candlelight. Then, as though remembering himself, he unhanded ruby tresses, and stepped aside her, gazing out of one of the library’s beveled windows, a private smile unintentionally reflected through the glass.
“Do you find yourself any more amenable towards retiring, my lady?”
A thousand thousand outcomes could spring out of that single, quiet confession. Sansa, in truth, had considered very few. Yes, I should like you to ask for my hand. Sealing their alliance in so permanent, so public a manner eliminated a great many of the possibilities which at one time or another must have whirled through the Mockingbird’s mind. And for a time chaos served him well; her too, though the girl entered into it far less willingly, blind to the path on which she walked. Yet the building of a castle, the founding of a kingdom which had long ago knelt in recognition of another, greater throne, spoke to the development of order. Inevitably such progress demanded the abandonment of many promising avenues in favor of pursuing those few deemed most worthy.
It was no bait, though. Petyr would not beat her, would not keep her in discomfort, understood acutely the value in blood and spirit alike that a daughter of the Riverlands and the North held. Hardly a love match, a marriage between Stark and Baelish could easily benefit them both. Him more than her, perhaps; Sansa knew that the suspicions of certain Lords Declarant would be echoed, even amplified, were she to bring Petyr to her home as more than a valued friend.
“Peace and war alike carry a certain inevitability with them.” Could they forge a peace, together? Would he want to?
Sansa was not mad, as Lysa had seemed those final days; nor was she filled with a boastful sense of immortality, as Hardyng had been. She spoke of bedding down beside a man personally known to exhibit fleeting, deadly favoritism, but steadfastly believed herself beyond such inconstancy. Their lessons, such as they were, convinced her. No man so clever as Petyr gifted disposable pieces with time and knowledge wasted in death. One did not build with brick and mortar when cheap lumber would suffice for a time. In cultivating her wit, her independence, Baelish satisfied an ego she had yet to discover bounds for, but created in Sansa a possible downfall as well.
Over time she grew more and more aware of the dichotomy, the risk he took, in a way, by equipping his prized piece for queendom. Whether born from an affection towards the mother, or an interest wholly independent of parentage, Sansa nonetheless felt that it had come time for her to take an equally ambitious gamble of devotion. Most worrying were the impulses untied to pragmatism; lingering touches when he renewed a chestnut stain, intrepid advances in his solar, the inescapable intimacy of two souls bound in lies and blood. A gory net to be sure, that which ensnared so red a bird, yet Sansa caught herself wearing it as a cloak.
She could not fathom a cause for refusal, making his ponderous silence all the more troublesome. Had Sansa misjudged him, the ties which kept them close? Was he now thinking of poisoned stones or open doors upon a mountaintop, rather than a septon, a marriage bed, a crown? Had sentiment, however weak, proven her undesirable? My mother. Riverine eyes drifted from his face, downward to where copper vines tumbled over rings of office. He thinks of my mother, nothing more. Would he call me Cat as well? Lysa’s words could still echo in an empty bedchamber, jolting the girl from sleep.
“Smallfolk oft feel warmly towards names long known. The Whents were kinder to the Riverlands than any Slynt or Lannister.” Unbidden, a fear of curses gnawed at her belly. Give it to Walder Frey, Sansa told him once. Petyr could give it to him yet…then let the keep rot.
She smiled though, swift and soft, before he stepped away. An excuse. A connection. A thread, however tenuous, that might strengthen both their claims. Sometimes Sansa marveled that he still put any weight to childish suspicions and signs; mayhaps he only spoke of them to tempt her own whimsical tendencies.
“Less and less, I must admit.” Did he agree? Had he accepted? What was to come next? In her mind a hundred thoughts stumbled over one another in a haste to be considered. Petyr’s enigmatic statement of fact did nothing to resolve the matter. Where once she might have pressed, Sansa held her tongue. In that single word she asked of Baelish more than he had ever thought to give, perhaps, and surrendered her lofty perch of detachment. To seem eager, or even anxious, gave him more leverage than she wished.
Walking as she spoke, Sansa drew up behind Petyr, peering over one shoulder at the white expanse below. “But, if there remain labors which demand your attention…I would accept an escort to my chambers gratefully.”
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A lone brow rose at her playful barb, though Petyr did not seem to take any true offense to it. “Ser Gyles has the right of it.” The cold was miserable. Icy winds which froze fingers to the bone, stiffening them even when covered by glove or mitten. Noses and ears reddened, every intake of breath creating a crystal frost inside of nostrils. Did the man mean to escort her himself through the drifts of snow and frost-laden woods? “Goodness no,” he chuckled. “I am ill-suited for snowy ventures.” Yet her point of the courtyard remained: how much time had he spent without complaint helping to rebuild her simulacrum in ice? Never had he seen her look so beautiful, with flakes of ice in her hair, and a rosy tint to her cheeks. Never had she looked more pure, her mind at ease, escaped to the North and swimming with fond memories of her childhood. No ride through the woods would ever be able to capture her as she was, or recreate that moment in which he had surrendered every sensibility so that he might kiss a snow maid, or else he might ride with her into the woods every day. “My generosity will need to extend to…other pursuits.” A quiet smile.
If she were to actually ask him? Would he say no? Could he?
Turning the line of questioning to decidedly more improper topics, Petyr could but slant his eyes towards Sansa, catching only the end of her fox-tail mane flipping. It was a brief look, as though he meant only to ascertain whatever expression the tone of her voice managed to hide. For a moment, the Lord was quiet. Amusement pinched the corners of his eyes. “I make a handsome living concerning myself with the feelings of others.” As if everything he did boiled down to some unvoiced transaction. It was a statement more telling of the man than perhaps any other he had ever said to her. Lost to the dry pages of an ancient tome.
The slanted gaze returned a second time when Sansa voiced that impossible suggestion. Why not you? As if Petyr Baelish had not run through a thousand different scenarios from start to finish in an attempt to find one in which he could claim Sansa Stark for himself. Why had he never asked? Oh, but he had, he wanted to say and did not. Before she had been sold to the Imp; before her family had been butchered by the Freys; before he had stolen her away and transformed her into a bastard girl – the only way he might make her his. Oh, he wanted her. There were times where that feeling of want burned in his chest so intensely that it hurt. Sansa Stark, the essence of her, filtered through his veins and kept him up at nights. But it was not to be. Not for lack of great Lordship, such the likes that Cersei had been so swift to deny him. Now, Petyr lacked other things. Things which were essential to Sansa’s ascension.
“Conversation will not win wars, my lady.” Nor would familiarity, not would comfort. Baelish had no armies, and did not command the sort of loyalty that was required to build them. Armies the size needed to resecure the North could not be bought, in Westeros, with coin. The land was bled thin, so many potential kings and queens vying for the throne, able-bodied men scattered across the realm under a handful of different banners. Lions and stags and flowers and suns, soon to be diluted further still by wolves and dragons. The North would forsake Sansa if upon her arrival her hand was forever entwined before the gods with that of a Mockingbird’s. Those who tenuously supported her rule now would turn away. None trusted the gray plumage of Petyr Baelish, and rightfully so.
“Am I to believe you would have liked me to?” Turning back towards her, slowly, a set of fingers slid down the pages, a papery sound hissing in whispered drag. Hadn’t he told her, once, that innocence and experience made for the perfect marriage? Did he still find her innocent? In body at least, if not in mind? The book was slowly folded over and carefully set to a table. Petyr looked at her, in a quietly curious, equally amused manner that made it seem as though the entire idea were somehow funny to him. A step, only one, was taken towards her. “Would you still?”
Indeed he was. Even now, huddled safely upon the valley floor, well-supplied in timber and oil alike, she often glimpsed the Lord covetously ensconced within a cloak of fine black fur, or edged particularly close to a room’s hearth. The thought of Petyr venturing out once more into the snowy wasteland wrought by Winter’s coming amused her…and intrigued her equally. It was assumed that Baelish would follow the Stark lady and her husband northward; north to a grey keep of ash and snow so that he might complete this masterwork of political maneuvering. ‘Twas a castle far larger, far less saccharine in its making that required great quantities of coin and attention, whose completion would not garner the man another coveted embrace. So why? Sansa’s road ended at Winterfell, a chilling and unsatisfying cap to decades-long ambitions. Even now, greater motives remained skillfully tucked away behind enameled masks.
“I didn’t mean —— ” Crimson flushed along her cheeks and throat, a guilty stain flaring hotly in the yellowed light. Sansa’s question had naught to do with the feelings or pursuits of others, rather preferences more personal. She wondered then if he ever watched the men in his brothels, as surely he had peered upon her in the godswood, her chambers, her bath. How easy it could be to spend one’s life in observance, until at last a man became nothing more than a compendium of mismatched wants and hungers, a vessel for strangers rather than himself. Did Petyr Baelish — not Littlefinger — possess any of his own? If so, they were never shared with his ward.
Whatever calm she felt when first posing the timid question deserted Sansa. Perhaps a part of her hoped he had not heard, or would politely ignore such an intimate inquiry. Even now it felt as though she played a game of cyvasse in a room of no light and little sound, hardly knowing where her pieces sat, much less the man who played opposite. Asking such a thing could tilt the advantage irrevocable in Baelish’s favor…or, just maybe, in hers. For once these stratagems came to mind only after the curiosity of Sansa’s heart dictated a fool’s tongue.
“True,” the girl conceded, turning with false consideration to a nearby shelf. Along its wooden support stretched tomes new and old on the extensive Arryn lineage. The seed is strong. That was what Jon Arryn told his wife, was it not? All but yours perhaps, my lord. Little Robert Arryn would garner a footnote, nothing more, in those dusty annals. “Yet it might avert them.” For a time it seemed the Lords Declarant would undo all, yet a few choice words and well-timed deception turned fickle tides towards peace once again. As bold with them as he is with me. A different sort of bravery, no doubt, than that of her father or poor, dead Ser Harrold; tinged with a darkness, a thirst which paid no mind to the barriers that dictated the acts of honorable men. In Westeros loyalty might be purchased, through coin or land or titles, or persuaded. While Baelish would not mount a horse in polished armor, brandishing his family’s sword for the honor of Sansa Stark, he could still stir others to that bent.
“No.” Had he not felt her struggle that day in the courtyard? Of course he had. Just as Petyr surely knew in their other dalliances, where consent grew slowly, that enthusiasm, confidence in the act remained perilously low. Nor was it merely a maid’s trepidation: only in the moments after speaking did Sansa dare consider him in a suitor’s light. It was not, she admitted with no small amount of trepidation, unflattering. Upon the shelves she found a particularly fascinating title, head tilting to read it properly in her small halo of candlelight held aloft. Rather without warning Sansa felt herself at a precipice’s edge, toes peeking out into oblivion.
Where Baelish appeared entertained by conversation’s turn — and how her belly dropped at the sight — Sansa finally looked to him with apprehension in those narrow rings of blue made nearly black for lack of light. Terror at what thoughts blossomed in her weary mind, at how he might laugh were she to speak them, at how he might indulge them. Yet he asked. He asked, that alone sufficing to smooth away beleaguered crinkles of brow and eyes as Sansa admitted, calmly, with the shrug of one shoulder: “Yes.” Gods help me, I can never unsay that word. Instead, she repeated it. “Yes, Petyr, I would.”
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Would Winterfell truly soothe her every ache? Over the rolling hills of snow awaited a broken castle, stones hewn and crumbling along a great expanse of northern land. Houses lie scattered, loyalties broken and age-old ties severed under the axe of uncertainty. There were those who still remained, in secrecy, loyal to a Bolton rule, a Lannister rule. Where was pride and honor when compared to life? A starving belly and suffering children were matters of greater import – tradition and belief be damned. Eddard Stark was dead; Sansa Stark was only a daughter, whose army came borrowed and now lacked a head. Harrold’s falcons would fly, fly away when it became obvious that Sansa had no interest in entertaining a second suitor from the Vale.
There was yet a tremendous amount of work to be done. Debts would need be paid, promises made and kept. Sansa had only a tiny sliver of agency: she had but her kindness and the remembrance of her father and his doings to help her along the way. Where her mind flitted towards matters of grain and pardons and the comforts of a childhood home, Baelish knew better. The situation before her was grim, and would require a tireless effort in order to secure.
Winterfell would break her down. It would crush her under the weight of broken towers and seared roofs. It would gut her and remind her that the world cared only for itself. But if she was strong, then she would rise from the ash of the place she’d once heralded as home and rule them all.
“You are allowed every leisure, my lady. If ever there was one who could appreciate ice and snow I should think it would be you. Take a palfrey, roam where you might. Do as you would.” The unsaid stipulation of course being that she could never do much of anything alone. Constant supervision was necessary to protect so precious a ruby. There were so many thieves who would seek to steal it as their own.
"Gossip is to be utilized, and never listened to,” he slyed. “I am an exceedingly generous man, to those I consider friends.” Did that include Sansa? Is that what she was? A friend? A partner to go hand-in-hand with in executing schemes? No different than the Lannisters and the Tyrells once had been? Sansa had seen first hand how Petyr Baelish treated his friends once they were no longer of any use to him. Did she ever wonder if her worth was set to depreciate?
“Two lovers. Three lovers. Six, seven, ten.” Petyr’s eyes did not leave the book, tracing the inked lines of a rather lewd illustration depicting the once-King and his brides. “To some men, number makes little difference. One can hardly become overwhelmed when they do not concern themselves with the enjoyment of their bedmates.” The page was turned, and Petyr went with it, the smooth expanse of his doublet-clad back presented to Sansa. It was a rich, deep green color, patterned by golden threaded swirls. Moments passed by in silence, Petyr seemingly engrossed by the Targaryen tome.
“History will flatter you well,” he forespoke, shutting the book and sliding it back to its place on the dust-layered shelf. “Beauty and victory are pleasing to the palate. The Red Queen. She-wolf of the North.” Another book was pulled from its place, so caked with dust it looked as though it had not been disturbed in a generation. Petyr blew a mighty gust, sending a cloud of silvery gray into the air before carefully prying open the weathered codex. “You are why stories are written and songs are sung.”
Petyr spoke with such a certainty, such a casual air of complete confidence, that it was difficult not to believe every word he said, or fall into the images of every picture he painted.
Sansa knew abstractly the obstacles which still remained to her happiness and security; could even acknowledge the reality of some, as familiar with battles and bread shortages as a lady had any right to be. Hope insulated her. Should Petyr voice his musings on scattered loyalties, tenuous arms, and recalcitrant subjects then she would be compelled to agree: the situation looked grim indeed. The weaker sex was never meant to assume the highest seat, best consigned to child-bearing, a few murmured pieces of advice if his lordship felt so generous. Though these Northmen would accept her as a daughter of Ned Stark, a treasure to be guarded and secreted away, that did not necessarily herald an adoring constituency. Add to their dubious support an army loyal to her now-dead husband and Sansa Stark was clearly an ivory pillar, balanced alone on its pedestal, a mockingbird perched in wobbling claim at the top.
She believed in herself, however, in her intentions and the cause they birthed. She believed in an agency greater than Petyr credited, greater mayhaps than what she possessed. But a measure of strength or its illusion would bridge many of the smaller conflicts, respected by those loyal lords predisposed to welcoming a wolf back into their fold. An example to follow, to emulate, to cultivate: a new Northern strength, stoic and cool as the father who had led them all before. They would help her, others would help her, outnumbering those that resisted. Sansa clung to such notions — of goodness, of a sense of right held deep within most humans.
The path ahead lay far too dark without their light.
A sniff left her, dignified, incredulous."Ser Gyles makes for poor company in the cold. I daresay he complains of a chill more swiftly than you, my lord.” Petyr had not complained that morning in the godswood; strange really, after so much time crouched in the fresh-fallen snow. “Unless you mean to escort me yourself, hm?” Baelish was if nothing else a meticulous man, averse to leaving any detail out of place. Her mouth pulled up at one corner, the small amusement impossible to make out concealed as it was in the flickering candlelight.
“Such an escort would be considered generous.” As she spoke Sansa leaned towards the nearest shelf with her candle, peering at a halo of illuminated gilt titles. Histories reaching back to the First Men, that moldy rock sitting on the Lord Protector’s ancestral lands; yet more on the Dragon Lords, alongside a smattering of Essosi tomes bound in colors brighter and deeper than their counterparts. Ample distraction as she dared ponder what they were. Friends? Father and daughter? Not how he touched her, looked at her, treated her. Sansa doubted any word existed in the Common Tongue for whatever connection had forged itself between her and Petyr.
Only that it was.
Momentarily her thoughts slid to Harrold, their wedding unconsummated. How he had grinned so roguishly at the girls carrying him upstairs. How he had two bastard children. Charming. Brave. And not much else, apparently. “And does it — would it…concern…you?” she asked haltingly, unsure if she meant it as flirtation or cheek. His desk. Sansa tossed her hair, as though it had caught up the entire conversation like a fisherman’s net and shaking it might dislodge all the slithering, slippery thoughts summoned up. Baelish would have seen none of it, busying himself with the towering shelves.
I have but one. Beautiful though she was, Sansa Stark had no meaningful victories to her name save survival…and a burned husk of a castle, perhaps. Nonetheless, both cheeks flushed pink, a maiden’s blush, to hear another speak so plainly in her favor. For a long while Sansa stood there at Petyr’s back, a faint smile on her lips, remembering promises begged of him in other rooms, assurances and equal footing demanded even as the ground shook beneath her. Would it be so terrible, that notion she had entertained before? Trusting Petyr, welcoming him into her bed rather than a stranger? Baelish was in several ways a known quantity whose predictability and risks she could anticipate. He saved me, Sansa thought, childishly, staring at the whisper of silvery-grey hairs visible from the back of his head. When it mattered, he saved me.
“Why not you?” Quiet as a mouse, that question. Her candle holder tapped to a shelf. “Why not you, Petyr? We — we…know one another, talk to one another…” Hands twisted at her waist, the girl watching as she painted her fingers with pink and white stripes from the pressure. You want me, she might have added. Instead: “So, why have you never…asked…?”
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No, Sansa required no masculine support, evidenced well enough in her standing without waiting for a hand to grasp. She was no maid, no helpless damsel. The way she carried herself was entirely different now. Playing well into the role of window or at the very least into that of strong. Such subtleties would serve her well in the North, he imagined, where the sight of a simpering girl would do nothing to inspire confidence in those Lords who had lost so much at the suggestion of a name. Lord Eddard Stark’s visage was nowhere to be found in Sansa: there was no strong jaw or steely eyes. Everything about her was soft, feminine, kind; it was necessary, therefore, for her to to exude tenacity and clout in other ways.
Petyr’s own chair scuffed across the stone as he made to rise. Along the table he walked, a single index finger dragging along the polish surface. “A son,” he echoed. “Many sons, if your Gods are kind.” A smile accompanied the lift and crook of an arm held cordially out to her. “A shame that Lord Hardyng was unable to provide.”
There were no servants nearby to hear, no dining guests to add quip or comment to their conversation. For what reason would he ever utter such a thing to her in private if not to mock? Though the curve of his mouth was no less genial, the gentle touch of his hand no less proper. Petyr had sabotaged any chance of Sansa bearing Falcon heirs, and yet he was ready to thrust her into another marriage so that she might bear another’s. Certainly a bowl of moontea might have proven infinitely easier to provide than the ruse of a freshly riven maid. There stood no other logical reason for Petyr to have preserved her maidenhead other than entertaining the idea that he wanted it for himself. Every touch, every kiss, every wanting look he’d ever given her told her that was true, yet never had he bargained for her in terms which might give him such gains.
“Winterfell awaits Sansa Stark.” Such was the news. Petyr had told her all he intended to of the Northern keep. Civil unrest was to be expected; a flurry of brutish Lords fought and would continue to fight for rights using whatever paltry excuses they could muster. Others still realized the benefits in plying the Stark girl with marriage proposals and promises of fealty. All of which Sansa knew.
The delicate lace hems and underskirts of her gown rustled along the cold stone as they walked – slowly, as she wished. The flaps of Petyr’s doublet brushed against her in easy stride. “You grow weary,” he said, in observation and not question. “Take care, Sansa. Soon there will be no time to think of the snow.” Did she think of it as he did? Flakes decorating her hair like a net of diamonds, her fingers frozen, warmed between his hands. Petyr thought of it, often, of what that exact moment had done to change the course of their journey. How many lives were lost, plots foiled and remade, destinations altered because one man was unable to resist the frost-pinked cheeks of a woman?
“There is still much yet to be read,” he reminded. Indeed, Petyr seemed to be heading not towards Sansa’s room but the Eyrie’s extensive libraries. Once outside he dipped in to retrieve a candle, dipping it into the wall sconce lit just outside until the wick caught and glowed. “Or if you tire of histories there are books you might read for pleasure.” Petyr closed the door behind them. The single light was split off into another, Petyr handing one candle to Sansa. Still the lights were dim in so large a room, casting gaunt shadows to skitter along the walls and shelves, orange slivers dancing over aged tomes and the spines of a thousand thousand books. “More entertaining than the sound of snow, at the very least.” Petyr smiled, wandering to a shelf and pulling out a book. The sound of dry paper echoed through the room as he skimmed through the pages. “Targaryen lineage? Aegon and his sisterwives. Do you imagine he took them both at once?” A quiet smirk flickered over his features, looking down towards unseen script.
"Remarkable,” she concurred, fitting her hand into the proffered crook with gracious nod. “Especially when one considers his prior glut of fortune.” Two bastards before he was even wed; no, Sansa would not have enjoyed the Young Falcon much at all, averse as she was to further humiliation. This arrangement suited her far better: unwed, unburdened, free to dine and converse with Baelish as she saw fit; would that a woman’s worth — and even more, a queen’s — did not hang upon the productivity of her womb.
Though in truth the Stark heir also wondered as to a greater motive behind the convoluted plot surrounding her second marriage, Sansa oft contented herself with assurances of his enduring care for her happiness. Bah! As great a lie as one she ever told. Selfishness surely dictated every move, be it lateral, forwards, or backwards, across the vast checkered board Petyr seemed to play upon. Still he required Sansa Stark, still he required Winterfell, if not by choice than by virtue of where her whims had led them. Her whims. Not his plans. Perhaps some indulgence of a less practical nature yet remained; for one so avaricious as the Lord Baelish, however, to not even attempt insinuating himself into her marriage bed seemed more than strange.
Too much. So many threads to chase it set Sansa’s head to spinning much like a second cup of wine. Better to think on them later, when she was distracted by neither the warmth at her side nor the near-familiar comfort it now offered. What Petyr wanted remained as shadowy to the girl as her own desires, made all the murkier by past deceptions. Did she want to lie with him, claim him as husband before returning northward? The question left only emptiness at her center, a damning ambivalence all other possible suitors garnered as well; though not the worst of all possibilities, it was still a marriage. Why not carry on as they did now, amiably strolling through corridors, bound in wit if not in flesh? The scandal. A young, high-born woman still of child-bearing age, associating so closely with a Lord of Baelish’s profession, of Baelish’s past? No matter her own happiness, Northern nobles would never abide such flagrancy, and it was them she must needs please.
“As she awaits Winterfell.” Her tone did not lack a curt impatience — delayed for a matter Sansa would have preferred go unaddressed, homesickness grew with every passing day. Fingers itched for want of occupation: construction orders, pardons and warrants, distribution of winter stores. Menial tasks, perhaps, yet ones that signaled healing. In saving Winterfell, the people it protected, Sansa sought to save herself.
Breathe in. Breathe out. The boning of her bodice — new, still the black of a widow’s weeds — creaked under her efforts. “And you do not?” she murmured. Ah, snow. Those moments spent building bridges and gargoyles rarely entered into her mind, certainly not with the frequency or duration they did Baelish’s. But the moments that followed. Cold, thin fingers of ice threatening to pull her out an open door; lungs burning with inconsequential pleas; the snap of skirts and the sacrifice of a slipper, alongside her aunt. It was that snow, the kind that might have swallowed up Sansa Stark, heard her final screams before forming a pretty tomb she thought of most, and that choice as well. It seemed to matter so much more than a silly kiss.
Petyr had, after all, taken so many others without consequence.
Reaching the library afforded Sansa some small measure of joy. At least it meant she would not yet have to retire a chambers cold and empty, alone. “Am I to be allowed such leisure?” Laughing softly, watching as he lit and cultivated flame, the girl’s mouth pulled up at one corner. “My lord is more generous than gossip might suggest; mayhaps I have been too hasty in blaming you for my present idleness.” Light banter, an ease of disposition acquired only in privacy: these things uncoiled knots along Sansa’s spine, let her believe, however temporarily, she was still a girl. Admist shadows that jumped and sifted along the walls, looking in equal turns to be grumkins, mammoths, and snarks, she trailed after Petyr, one outstretched finger tracing a line in accumulated dust atop the shelves. “Took them —— ?” Whatever pleasure reading she expected him to unearth, ‘twas nothing of that sort. Sansa, however, recovered swiftly. “'Tis you who have more experience in these matters, so I ask you, my lord: can a man, any man, fail to find himself overwhelmed in the company of two lovers?”
Tully blue took on a deeper tint behind her candle’s flickering yellow-orange; the brow she raised in cheeky riposte caught its light flatteringly.
The tensing of muscles, the whitening of strained fingers: all signs to be ignored by the man who paid little attention to the sight of her. Words, though – those were taken in, chewed slowly like cud, mulled and digested carefully. There was a long, thick stretch of wood between them. Why did the Lord insist upon taking seat at opposite ends? Formalities were important. Formalities ruled. Formality would steal Sansa a crown and with some luck secure Petyr a coveted position at her side. But not as a husband. That duty would go to another. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she would freeze over and harden in the long night. Perhaps she had already done so. A lone wolf.
No, she spoke. Then some caustic quip about a life he had stolen her away from. No, sweetling, I plucked you from that garden, he might have said, but did not. Silence settled. She was displeased. If not with him then with all else, and it would not be long before she soured with naught else but the grim reality of a barren keep and grueling journey Northward to distract her. How lovely the Stark girl might have been, a Tyrell flower, sweeping her skirts on the arm of a noble cripple for the rest of her days. Wasted, but lovely. Always lovely. Happy in the simplicity of things. Is that what she yearned for? A simple existence, devoid of schemes and machinations?
Oh, but it was much, much too late for that.
Eyes of gray-green focused on the fire. The wending flames of red and orange and blue. For a long, long while the Lord remained quiet, wearing a look of impassivity, indicative of nothing.
“I suppose…if the Lady wishes, she may dismiss her callers.” It could be done, if the alternative was alienating her, forcing her hand and stirring her mistrust and resentment. A lone woman was far less likely to stand strong in the fiercely patriarchal North, but it was not impossible. If one could navigate those icy paths, it would be a Stark.
The light from the fire caught the red ruby set into the face of the ring adorning his pinky. Glinting, winking, like a crimson star in a sky of etched gold. Petyr laced his fingers together, the hue shifting to darker vermilion. “Is that what you wish? To be unfettered?” Finally, he turned to her, gazing across that stretch of table placed between them like a ravine. A smile played on his features. That same smile he plied so many others with in its perfect, sculpted geniality. Beneath it, with her practiced observations, she could see the sharpness edging every curve.
“Or we might trace the Mander all the way to Highgarden.” Still there was the ambiguous term of ‘we’. Certainly Petyr Baelish would have no rights to accompany her in a marriage to the Tyrells, though he might be fit enough to broker one. Was that Sansa’s point? That she would be rid of him? Had he already pushed the girl past breaking? Nonsense. The girl could withstand much more than that. Petyr’s smile, for an instant, veered decidedly more wry before it withered away.
“Shall I escort you to your chambers? I can but assume you are, as I am, finished with this pigslop.”
Formalities mattered only when an audience remained to take in their observance, drift away with thoughts of how properly the lord and lady conducted themselves. Sansa did not care how Petyr comported himself at such times: his solar, well past sunset; a dead, secluded godswood muffled in snow; her bath, perhaps, wreathed in steam. In those places his true demeanor showed, the mask removed and man revealed, providing clues as to how she ought navigate this new, strangely coequal partnership. What Baelish did not know — could not know, lest her tenuous agency evaporate — was that his auburn wolf had not bothered imagining a future in which he did not linger at her side.
Their sole attendant dismissed as punishment for spilt vintage, half-eaten dishes languished along the table’s expanse. Idly, Sansa hoped the leavings would be given to servants, their families, the smallfolk who already gathered closer to lordly seat as Winter encroached. A waste, poorly afforded she thought, despite sympathizing with growing dissatisfaction. Desiring a Tyrell marriage near as much as he wished to finish the meal with gusto, she had grasped only at what might prickle Baelish most. He had rescued her. At first little more than a porcelain doll, taken down from her shelf and arranged however another wished, through his forced disguise Petyr compelled Sansa to gather up tempered steel and wield it. In words, in thoughts, in the calculated endurance of one who has seen the chasm of defeat and refused to leap. While she might yearn for sweeter days, the girl knew — with some anger — they could never come again.
Sansa had witnessed too much, had too much shattered in that old life to ever truly return.
Lacking other occupation, Tully blue fell to a gemstone winking red and black some paces distant. Now revealed as true-born lady, sole remaining heir of noble house, Sansa could have worn jewels and silks unfathomable during her tenure as a bastard Stone. Her aunt’s glittering inheritance, however, still felt macabre rather than luxurious, left to molder in sealed and scented trunks. Harrold’s courtship had yielded a small number of gowns and trinkets, some given as tokens of affection, most commissioned by her dining companion to complement her newly revealed station.
If it irked the once-girlish Sansa that this supposed minor lord bested her sartorially, she gave no indication. Indeed the man’s musings were met with nothing but a frown, small and unobtrusive on delicate features, as though the ring offered some insignificant offense. "No.” Quiet, barely audible over the long, oaken distance, her voice had lost the challenging edge with which their conversation began. “I cannot.” Wisely were wants and desires denied mention, indulgences best avoided for one in her position. “I require a son,” Sansa told the middle space. Without a legitimate heir, all these months, years of machinations would amount to naught, reduced into a gaggle of squabbling lords battling one another over who would inherit a Northern seat following its ruler’s death.
Alliances, masculine support mattered not to Sansa. A child, begat from marriage, was essential.
“We shall face them together, I suppose.” Taking up his paired syntax, tacit agreement that Baelish and Stark were now irrevocably joined. But not in wedlock. It occurred to Sansa then that Petyr had never offered himself as suitor. He had kissed her, touched her, encroached upon her bedchamber mere hours after the exchange of holy vows, yet never implied he might serve as husband and father. Odd, she thought, for a man whose ambition and virility both ought paint her in desirable light. The girl turned back to her food with a twitch of lips. “Indeed.” Lemon cakes had not graced the lady’s plate in weeks, her own personal sacrifice in lean days. Chair legs scraped as Sansa pushed away from the abandoned meal, rising to a stand.
“Walk as slowly as it pleases you,” she invited, genuine. “The sound of falling snow becomes tedious entertainment after a time. What news from Winterfell?” How many men remained for their absent lady?
The scent of water heavy in the air, that particular clinging of mist to skin, every scented herb bursting with wet fragrance: all should have been clues to the Lord Baelish as to what transpired in yonder hall before he ventured too far inward. Perhaps they were. Perhaps he knew and continued on in spite of it. Because of it. What had he hoped to espy? A thousand girls before her had been watched, in the same manner, through corked hole, yet never before had he felt the heavy heat pooling in his abdomen. It was illicit. Not in the same way the women who accepted coin to unknot their silks and spread their legs were. Sansa Stark was pure, twice wed, never bed, never gazed upon but once by would-be husbands, never touched, never worshiped, never claimed in the way a man yearns to claim a woman.
Petyr Baelish was not her husband. A man, certainly, and even a man who had been granted certain liberties, but never a man who would be given the sort of freedom to look upon her, partake of her, know of her.
Beneath the water his red siren sunk, ripples of water sloshing against the edges of the metal basin, wisps of steam curling up from mirrored surface. It was a cape of wet, red hair that trailed down her back when she emerged. Petyr thought back to those days in which deep brown had hidden her true shade, and how, at times, he would massage his fingers over her scalp, scrub through her hair, evenly spreading the color. Even then she had given him liberties, though perhaps they were not offered so much as he had taken them, manipulated them away from her grasp; there had been no other to fill those roles for her, so dependent on him she had been for everything. How possibly could she have denied him? Oh, but she had tried, hadn’t she? Baelish was not so fooled by his own distractions that he was unaware of that.
Poor girl. Just a girl. Lost in the mire of winter.
* * * * *
“I had thought to call upon you earlier,” he said, absently, from across the table, a knife speared through a piece of roasted meat. Too dry for the Lord’s liking, yet hardly in a position to complain. No matter the size of the purse he threw at the hunters, there were no hordes of wild boar roaming the countrysides, nor fresh vegetables to be plucked from loamy soil. It was hard, boiled roots, salted meats, and stews. An innumerable amount of stews. An amalgamation of random foods thrown together in a pot to boil and simmer for hours or days until everything inside was a mouthful of poorly-seasoned mush. The Lord grew sour in disposition.
Nearby, a girl lingered with a carafe of wine. No matter the shortage of fine-tasting foods, there never seemed to be a shortage of wine. Petyr ushered her over with a twitch of two fingers. “I should like to discuss with you some matters.” Names, rather, of potential suitors, and Sansa would already know this. It needed no explanation. When the girl overfilled Baelish’s cup and red droplets slithered down the etched pewter of his goblet there was a great huff of disappointment from the Lord. Predictably, the girl stammered out apologies, immediately seeking to fetch a linen to remedy her mistake, but the damage, evidently, was already done. Away with you, Lord Baelish hissed, with a wave of his hand, before fingers touched to his brow in some semblance of exasperation.
“We are surrounded by fools and leeches,” he lamented. The girl would be sent away, back down the mountain to fend for herself, in whatever manner that amounted to. So many of the Eyrie’s staff had been dismissed already, leaving only a skeleton crew of cooks and chambermaids. A still-sizable guard remained to protect empty rooms and iced-over roads. It would be a grave error indeed to leave such a rubied prize without defense. It might have been any man who had earlier crept into her chambers to behold her in waters most private. Some other fiend, who would have done a great deal more than watch, a great deal more than slip his hand beneath the flaps of his doublet to rub indulgently at the bulge in his breeches. That was unacceptable. That would not do. There had already been an encounter far too close to Baelish’s liking; Sansa would need to be well-watched, smothered, if need be.
Disdainfully, a droplet of wine which had caught his index finger was flung away from him, away from the table, where it settled like blood to the stone beneath their feet. “Have you given any thought to whom you would entertain?” The Lord sounded irritable, bored, so unguarded it might seem uncomfortable to the girl who had only ever traded with the Mockingbird currency of masks.
No mention was made of the skittering, warm and prickling like a colony of ants, along snowy white shoulders and back as she bathed. Someone watched. Perhaps Petyr, perhaps a guard or maid. Regardless, the audience stood uninvited and inappropriate, encroaching upon so private an affair. Even Lord Baelish, who had laid claim to more of her intimate confidences — of the body and of the mind — than either husband who twined satin around Sansa Stark’s wrists, promising she would find comfort in such bondage, possessed no rightful claim to the sight of an auburn slick along her spine, the dew gathering in hairs along both arms, the faint swell of a breast just past her ribs.
By the time Sansa finished her washing the sensation, and its conveyor, had passed. Stepping out with a confidence unfelt, she dared cast one glance towards the expanse of wall at her back whilst bathing. Light grey stones, weeping with steam from cooling water, betrayed nothing.
* * * * *
Meals, like the walls and skies and moods which surrounded them, turned dun. Were it not for the lord’s rankled disposition, Sansa might have made her own dissatisfaction known; complaining to one already mired in dark thoughts of what they lacked, however, would provide little relief. For surely Baelish, never having posed as bastard girl or kept dangling from the purse-strings of a vicious queen, had not experienced means so thinly spread in a long while. A mark of his lowered guard in her company, perhaps, that the man would ever speak so plainly on the grim necessities of passing through a long Winter alive. Both souls seated at a barren table remained well-practiced in dual arts of discretion and silence, skills rarely relaxed even before one another.
Their cutlery, however, maintained a regality lacking in paltry foodstuffs. Silver spoon, polished to blinding sheen by a servant insufficiently occupied, scraped at the remnants of her much-maligned stew, bits of limp carrot and stringy muscle clinging to the bowl’s sides. “There is much to occupy you at present,” Sansa offered, words bland as the nourishment on her tongue, ever cautious of inquisitive ears. Stark blood revealed, she knew every word or twitch or glance carried with it a hefty purse of dragons, glittering gold, when shared with interested parties. Matters. Men. Another young lord or knight to promise Winterfell and her womb to. A grand kingdom and pretty, fertile wife, all the trappings of a game well played, luck parlayed into lasting glory.
Such a fate had the auburn wolf sorely wished to sidestep, condemning one virile suitor to his death so that it might be so. Knowing better than to protest while an audience lingered, Sansa expressed displeasure in the infinitesimal coiling of her shoulders, a faint whitening of the knuckles where they curled around her utensil. Inside the cheek hidden from Petyr’s view, teeth worried over flesh until the thin, coppery taste of blood seeped through. A maid’s ineptness thankfully rescued her from further exhibition. Sansa made no gesture of intervention, cast no sympathetic glance as the girl slunk away. The coming months and years would try them all, a sieve by which wheat and chaff would shake apart; she could change it no more than melt the rising drifts of snow.
“Less so than the capitol.” By virtue of so few occupants. Lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile, pleased at her own wit. Amusement, regrettably, came upon them in rare fashion now. Then matters pressed back upon Sansa, tightening throat and veins as she fought an urge to shout. No one! How could I ever wish for anyone! “No.” Honest, if not stripped of customary flourish. Her fidgeting with the uncleared dishes ceased, hands folded in her lap. Of the North, of the Vale, even of the Reach or the Stormlands, no man could hope to earn the trust, the desire, the tolerance of Winterfell’s heir. Too much lay shattered within for that.
“Mayhaps Lady Olenna would still see me married to her grandson,” the girl added archly, disinterested, blue glancing sidelong to where Dornish vintage slowly seeped into the castle’s foundations, then to the light smear of pink on Baelish’s finger resting in its place.
Harrold’s body returned to the Eyrie nearly two moons later, along with a retinue of Vale soldiers swathed in Aryyn blue. Though word of his death had come much sooner, carried on wings of ebon, delivering message most morbid. A freak accident, it was said. To have survived every battle, every brush with armed foe, only to succumb to a horse’s violent kick? So vicious, so strong, that his skull had been crushed, almost as though a heavy rock had connected with the boy’s head rather than a stallion’s hoof; then, Harrold had been known to ride a spirited creature. The Vale mourned for its Young Falcon. In a wooden casket his corpse was sealed, the chill of winter at least providing amiable conservation of frozen flesh, rather than a rotten, fetid pile of stinking guts, abuzz with flies and maggots.
Ravens poured in from near and far, the roost near to bursting with avian messengers. Predictably, support for the Stark heir nearly at once had begun to waver without a strong figurehead present in the field to guide and rally for. Afar, a girl wearing her widow’s weeds, mourning the death of her husband, meant little to those steeped in bloodied plains of war. She would need to make for the North, quickly, and with a promise to unite the North by means of marriage. Rushed though it may be, solace was taken in the fact that theirs had been a short coupling. Barely a marriage at all, some would say. Baelish was inclined to agree.
Hoping to discuss matters of a third match, he sought her out. It was far from intentional that he found her as he did, with swirls of steam surrounding her, a mist clinging to the cold stone of the floors and walls. Perhaps he ought have known better; surely a man of his ilk would have taken a vested interest in Sansa’s whereabouts, in her intimate schedule, the nights when she took to bathing among them. Or else he should have taken note of the maids which had been tasked with carting in buckets of snow, again and again, until enough water was melted and warmed by fire to fill a basin. Baelish could smell the herbs which had been sprinkled in the water: a dried concoction of rose and lavender stolen from sachets bought and delivered at great cost. It would not do for their Queen to smell of turned goat’s milk or pig shit. Nude shoulders were espied, a wet trail of unbound crimson hair weaving down her back like heavy velvet. Like blood. The ivory of her skin seemed to fade in and out with the steam, as though she weren’t alive at all, but something ethereal. Petyr was a man transfixed. Unseen, unheard, unspoken, lingering behind stone shelving carved from the very mountain itself, where an assortment of glass vials containing oils and herbs were collected, not unlike some mad maester’s esoteric hoard.
All manner of business was forgotten in the face of Sansa, partly submerged. A better man would have turned and left her to her privacy. A better man would not have stared in a state of queer awe. For all that Petyr Baelish had touched his little ward, very little of her skin had been swallowed by the eye. A wrist, a neck, the loveliness of her face – all such things deemed ordinary the man had taken in, memorized, worshiped in the quiet darkness, but never so much had he beheld the nakedness of an arm or the glimpse of a thigh. Sansa’s bare back was enough to steal from him his very breath. And so it did. Long enough for the Mockingbird to not even realize he’d been holding it. With a slow, near-silent effort, he released it in a long stream, fingers grazing the chill of stone he perched behind with shameful, brazen immorality.
Sansa grieved. Not just the mummer’s show of ebon silk and forgone rouge. True tears, of remorse for a young man’s life stolen away so quickly, of regret that it came, in part, by her hand. And of disappointment, that even such pain as was felt upon tidings of freakish calamity would not prevent her from choosing similarly again. How like her Harrold seemed, especially in younger, more innocent years: absorbed with the gallantry of knighthood, the waxing power of inheritance and high marriage, the virile delight in gaining so pretty a wife. To the Young Falcon, life must have seemed just as a song.
Until musicians fell silent, every instrument choked to silence by a plot which never accounted for his enduring participation. So Sansa wept, for the boy who would never grow into a man, and for the girl she could never again return to. For two days she avoided Petyr in all things, be they chance encounters or no. Meals were taken in her rooms, visitors limited; whether he interpreted the brief absence as concession to the role of widow, or a less altruistic gesture, Sansa neither knew nor cared. Only after those hours of indulgence had passed did she feel confident enough to reside in his company again, mask securely in place. Even then they spoke of trivialities, alluding to journeys and marriage contracts without ever seeming to commit.
Solitude became her sanctuary, much like the long months passed in a lions’ den. Although wood was fast rendered a luxury as Winter trudged forth, not once did she hear objection to requests for baths warmed to steaming comfort. Knowing of the expense, the labor now involved, Sansa savored each descent into the linen-lined basin with near-criminal glee. Fine oils blossomed in the vaporous fog, mint and lavender and sandalwood and rose twined together into a heady bouquet, underlain with the faint creaminess of milk to soften her water and soothe the skin. For an hour or more she would lounge, stretched across the wooden tub, arms hanging over each side and head angled against its rim. Perhaps she dozed. Perhaps she simply was.
Meditative state dissolved away when Sansa thought to hear the faint scraping of heels along the floor, too heavy for a maid, too light for a lumbering, armored guard. Both knew better than to disturb their lady as she bathed, the girl declaring a strange preference to wash herself unless an occasion demanded otherwise. Joffrey, among others, had left his marks…not all of which she bore on porcelain flesh. Only one other would be so bold as to call on her in such a state – Petyr – although by now pronouncement of his presence ought have already occurred. An imagining, then, or else…
That’s all you ever do, isn’t it? Watch.
Perhaps, after all the liberties taken between the pair, she no longer cared as in the past. Perhaps Sansa truly did believe her ears decieved her, that no visitor lurked on the room’s fringes. Or perhaps some small part of her wished to incite. Silent breath preceded a swift descent into the water, until not a speck of girl showed. Mere moments passed before she emerged, dripping wet, scalp drenched and readied for washing. Tully blue, however, had squeezed shut against the perfumed bath. Craning forward, Sansa stretched to one side, that furthest from the doorway, pawing half-blind for a simple stool upon which several dry linens perched. Though the bath was deep, its sides high, the barest sliver of flesh, a faint curve of bosom, the intimation of slender waist, all arched up and away from clear depths.
A queer attempt at some semblance of modesty, for one so clearly alone.
Sansa ought not underestimate the greed of men. Lords of the Vale, Lords of the North, all sought the same coveted seat, the same coveted power, the same auburn girl who held a legacy on her dainty shoulders. Baelish, far from altruistic, was exactly as the rest, only his methods were far more oblique. The only difference being that he seemed to want her, as much as he wanted for himself. Wintefell was no gift to be given. It was a tool, as all else was in the realm of games and schemes and victories not yet won. Petyr cared not at all for the Northern keep of Sansa’s upbringing, only for what it represented. She knew that; he knew she knew that. Tenuous, then, their alliance remained. Bound by mutual wants, but to what end? What happened after Winterfell? What happened after Petyr placed a crown on a newly-made Queen’s head? None of them were favors. None of them. Did she believe it was his affection which so drove every endowment or promise?
“And in such ways I see the makings of one entirely capable of making difficult decisions.” Petyr smiled. Whatever Sansa needed to swallow to justify the means, it mattered not. What mattered was her ability to do so.
“No. There is no other.” The smile waned. Fool creature to have skated so near a line. Too much wine, not enough sleep. Baelish grew comfortable, and in his comfort he grew careless. A rather grim reality when negotiating anything related to one Sansa Stark. It was for the best that he had relegated her to the far reaches of his dealings. There was little she could do now to spoil or thwart. All that mattered was that he remain in her good graces. Of that, Petyr was confident in his ability. “Only you. Only you, my lady. It has proven a tremendous effort for several armies. You are but one.”
Yet she was a phoenix. Brilliant embers raining from her wings like tiny red gems as she surged from the ashes wrought by Lannister, by Bolton, by every person who so decried the name Stark and sought to erase it from the tomes of Westerosi lore and history. Every star had aligned to illuminate her in the darkness. There would be few whose face, whose name, whose story would be enough to win over a broken realm, a broken kingdom. Baelish could not have hoped for better luck. Before him, wearing her ambitions and hopes like a cloak of the finest silks and gems, sat a woman deserving of the station she would be granted. And how they would love her. How they would all love her.
Petyr did not address the premise of the fallen Robb Stark, nor how her path might be different were the Young Wolf still alive. Had Robb Stark not been slain then none of Petyr’s current plans would have seen fruition. Perhaps Sansa would never have been spirited away from King’s Landing to be given a pretender’s name and identity. Speculating on the past, on impossible possibilities, was a waste of time; Baelish did not make a habit of doing so. Not anymore.
The glint of emerald tilted downward, lips curved in easy smile, as Sansa voiced her decision. No. One word condemned the Eyrie heir to his death, and with it, granted permission for a new husband to be sought. Baelish carefully, precisely, folded the missive in half, running pinched nails along the crease. The wooden legs of his chair groaned as it was pushed back, Petyr rising to a stand. “Then you shall be included.” A concession? Or simply a ruse of cooperation? “A woman twice-wedded should indeed have say. I am hardly your father, after all.” A wry smirk was cast her way as he moved towards the door, missive still in hand.
“Remember, my lady: the right decision is rarely the simplest.” The door opened in dismissal.
Winterfell blinded the girl. Home blinded her. A strange happening, for many others might charge forward with slavering mouths, war cries upon their lips, to claim one of the largest swaths of land across the continent. Contained within the North were countless resources, rivers and harbors and long stretches of fields, dotted by woods which teemed over with predator and prey alike. A kingdom, for true. To men that land could be valued by farms which might spring up, golden dragons and argentate stags quickly filling a castle’s coffers; to Sansa, however, thoughts of what must be given predominated. Slowly deserted as her brother’s war marched southward, incinerated by traitorous Krakens, profaned by that contingent of flayed men so graciously bequeathed by the Lannisters, Winterfell required a great deal. As did its people, smallfolk and high borns alike driven to paucity or death by King Robb’s campaign.
Retaking the keep and its lands – her claim – represented fulfillment of duty, rather than ambition. Marriage, power, risk: all endeavors better avoided by the red wolf long wearied of the ploys which had already cost her family so much. In that, she and Baelish lacked anymutual wants, save the surficial motivation to stand upon the wintry castle’s threshold in victory. Whatever she must tell herself? Oh yes, Sansa told herself love of the mother, love of the daughter, guided Petyr down a brambled path cast in shadow, swallowed in mist, patrolled by all manner of avaricious beasts. Far more palatable to believe the efforts expended sprung out from the fabled power of devotion, rather than ruminate on what design could sprawl so large as to make him ally with her out of greed alone.
What Sansa told herself mattered not, only the repetition.
Azurine gaze, once steady, faltered then fell away. Calculated advances discomforted the girl before: Joffrey’s false offerings of jewels and sweet nothings, Tyrion’s cautious, failed attempts to better endear his child-bride to her punishment, her humiliation. Even attempts most skilled divulged an agenda, sometimes plain, sometimes concealed. Yet each one always unfolded too smoothly, as though the suitor had knowingly honeyed his tongue before deigning to speak. There were none of the shy stumbles or brash declarations which vouchsafed sincerity; songs still held sway within maidenly heart, yet Sansa now knew far better than to trust any courtship so cleanly wrought. While Petyr’s mask remained nigh indecipherable, such minuscule fissures in the carven facade granted pause.
A snow-kissed embrace. Agreements sealed with blood…and seed. Honesty at once troubling and emboldening, a continued string of revelations lacking all efficacy so long as their fates remained closely bound. Destroying Petyr would only cripple her own hopes; for self-interest alone, possible weaknesses passed noted and nothing more. Just as speculation on Robb Stark’s victory served nothing and no one, ruminating upon what glimpses Baelish accidentally allowed wasted effort better spent on the Northern Problem.
“Hardly,” she agreed, meeting a twist of lips with blue dulled by losses past. Ned Stark was honorable. Ned Stark was dead. Sansa did not smile. Watching with mild interest, of the sort politely bestowed by courtiers involved and yet removed from the action unfolding before them, she made no gesture of departure until Baelish had moved well beyond his seat. The girl looked down to her hands, neatly clasped atop folds of brocade. All illusion of choice, of partnership, of equality, was ground out beneath the soft tap - tap - tap of boots across stone floors. Dismissal. No. The Lord could not be permitted to bring every meeting to such a singularly satisfied end, placating his ward into silence then shuffling her away having gained hardly anything of consequence. She waited a moment, pressing frustration and pride to the rear until only an amiable composure remained. Standing then, Sansa swept across to the proffered exit, pausing across the threshold with one hand braced just above his along the door’s edge.
“No, my lord: the right decision is always simple. What men often forget is that simplicity rarely negates adversity.” A smile, at last, and she departed.
Far from rebuke; Petyr did not have empathy for the blind. Bodies carelessly cast to the slaughter, for his means, their means. If a man chose to fight for matters of duty or honor, for another man’s glory, then it was his choice to do so. In a time of war, a time of unrest, matters of loyalty could and did continuously shift from one to another. Perhaps it was what Petyr Baelish found so insufferable about the North; they would hold strong to their designs even if it meant their entire country would bleed and burn for it. Yet they were not so strong, so enduring as they liked to believe. One Lannister decree naming Bolton the Warden of the North, and not a single cry of uprising was heard from the houses self-named proud and honorable. No, Petyr did not rebuke Sansa for neglecting to feel pity or sorrow towards those who fought and died. Perhaps what she heard lurking under his voice was her own, fleeting feelings of guilt. Then that was what ambition was in this game, the game of thrones. One rarely gained anything at all without it coming at the cost of another. Certainly nothing so grand as a royal title. Each step one took was plodded on the broken backs of others. The good would, inevitably, suffer guilt.
So long as Sansa could stomach it, she would do very well.
Petyr stood to risk much by shifting the focus to Sansa. Petyr stood to risk all. A great deal of his plans would remain, temporarily, out of his control. Both a frightening and oddly thrilling premise. As clever and shrewd as she was, Petyr knew that what Sansa wanted would always come before anything he might hope to gain. Petyr knew, if fate brought her to him in opposition, he would be unable to cut her down. In that, he had perhaps found his ultimate adversary. A piece he was unwilling to best or cast aside.
As great a danger as she was an ally.
“No, I do not think I have.” Petyr’s smile was quiet, but sharp. “You knew it would not come without cost. Blood is a slippery currency, but it is currency all the same. No great house and its power is handed over for free, Lady Stark.” Petyr enunciated her name clearly, with a pointed emphasis on the consonant stop. “The Boltons paid a hefty sum for it, and there will be some to whom a claim is not enough. A claim is only worth as much as those who support it. What is one Stark for another? The realm is tired of houses squabbling amongst themselves; there was nothing to gain from Renley and Stannis standing divided when an alliance would have driven the lions from their den.”
Petyr paused, reconnoitering Sansa’s countenance, arranging the next words on his tongue.
"You are a woman.” Far from blunted. “You know as well as I the North respects tradition above all. Strength, loyalty, physicality. They will not be quick to bend the knee to you, no matter whose daughter you are, whose name you trail behind you, how kind you are.” It went unspoken: it would be prudent to align yourself with a familiar name. With a man.
"Would you prefer I consign this letter to the flames?” A curious arch of brow. Petyr fingered the edge of the missive. Should Sansa prefer Hardyng to Karstark, Umber, or Manderly, then it would, at least, ensure the support of the Vale remained on their side.
Jaw worked from one side to the other, the only outward proof of her rather childish inclination to chew upon the nubbed and spongy surface of her tongue whilst thinking. To believe herself empowered, a young woman with any measure of true influence, was the height of folly. Sansa knew her role at such a juncture, that of a banner with pulse and breath and charm. No one conquered from nothing, no one save Petyr. Robert Baratheon boasted the might of several great houses at his back, and before him the Targaryens flew on mighty creatures no army could best. She, by contrast, had only a newly forged marriage soon to be severed. The Vale lords may feel some stirrings of pity for a young woman mistreated and misplaced, but even with the growing distractions seizing the capital, the daughter of an executed traitor once fostered in their midst did not demand great hosts of soldiers as the weight of Winter settled in.
With news of Harrold’s death, their support would waver on a knife’s edge and eventually be lost. It was the North to whom Sansa must turn for strength, for support, for victory. Men who had not seen the girl in years, and who may yet believe preposterous tales of poison and bat wings. The self-doubt that so oft threatened to distract had to vanish, and swiftly. Without Harry, without the Vale, only Petyr remained.
As capable of raising her high as bringing her low. A risk unavoidable, so firmly twined were their paths now.
“There is a difference,” she articulated, “between understanding the cost of one’s choices and relishing the payment. I may consider these tidings good, yet sill mourn what was suffered to bring them to pass.” Sorrow, however, would not settle on her features. Contemplation, serenity, edged with the latent frustration of dealing with one less saccharine in disposition than herself, but no tears or flesh pinked by grief. “You know as well as I there is no other, Petyr.” Sansa inherited a kingdom, and a castle whose halls paid host to wraiths. Better a woman, the last of an ancient line, than men who proved their disregard for divine law. “They paid nothing. They have no claim.” Words remained calm, a chill of dissent playing against a rising heat in her veins. “Were Robb…”
Sansa looked away, to the knot of fingers twisting in her lap. Were Robb alive, you might never have stolen me away. Conjecture was useless and wasteful, she reminded herself. “My choices would follow a different course, were he alive.” Winterfell was her duty now, not a whim or avaricious grasp at power. Mulling his words, she pushed aside any retort born of disappointment or dissent. What did the North esteem more, sex or sigil? Were it the former, only one course of action stood open. A husband, unfortunately, complicated things: the balance of power, questions of control…the strange, unaddressed shift in how Baelish and Sansa might communicate.
“No.” Her chin jerked up, eyes turned back to his. Hardyng had already perished in her thoughts; to resurrect him would shake Sansa profoundly. Nonetheless, thoughts alone of a third marriage set her stomach to rocking as it had upon the Merling King. “You say the North is proud. Assistance, any wise man would stomach; occupation…” With Harrold, the North would amount to little more than an acquisition of the Vale, rather than a kingdom in its own right. “I wish to be included. I am a woman twice-wedded, after all: that ought afford me some measure of choice in the matter.” One Sansa would much prefer not to make at all.
