Everything was grey. Sansa was old enough to remember when riots of color bloomed across the landscape, though with each passing day her memories were trusted less and less. There was not even the faintest whisper of pigment to the countryside. Only death. When she would draw near to even the smallest city, a misting of ash would begin to rain down. Sometimes it was only soil, so dry it raised up at the slightest wind; other times it was from a town put to the torch, meant to deprive any newcomers of its shelter. A third source was far more common, when the flake fell thicker, a faint sheen of oil granting them an opalescent finish.
When that precipitation fell, Sansa would stretch a tattered sleeve over her hand and press it close over mouth and nose. It didn’t quite keep the smoked greasiness from crawling down her throat, pooling in the sacs of her lungs and lingering there to taint every breath. A thousand thousand souls, all nesting between her ribs in a quest for eternal life. She was a vessel, filled and surrounded by death, a guttering match slowly bobbing across the countryside. Alone.
Arya had been the last to succumb. Chills racked her small frame for days; when her coughs brought up carmine spittle, however, it was the older girl’s blood that ran cold. She slept in the coarse wool blanket, Sansa making due with a mud-smeared tarp, and worked to keep from tripping over the ratty hem of their father’s coat during the day. They happened upon a lone pharmacy once, shelves torn asunder, the dim glow of unknown pills winking up from the floor. One bottle of child’s painkillers had survived. When Arya’s throat was too dry to swallow it, her sister ground it into their cold dinners from a shared can.
It didn’t even ease her passing. Perhaps not even a doctor could have, something Sansa whispered to herself in the dark to try and stay the tears of failure. Her sister had heaved for hours, the coughing so severe it did not even cease long enough for her to accept food or drink. She twined them together, arms a vice about trembling ribs, willing them to still. A fool’s wish, as still they did after a final whispered plea for their mother.
The ground was too hard and Sansa was too weak, thinner than ever before from her campaign to nurse the younger girl back to health, for a burial. And it was cold – so cold – that none of their coverings could even be spared to protect her from the elements. She spared what tears she could, and spent a final night in silent vigil, but the following morning Sansa drug her sister into the high weeds some ways off the path and said a prayer that nothing worse than dogs or birds would find her. At least that was a natural abomination.
Silence, it seemed, truly was deafening. It thickened the air and pressed heavily on her tympana, a constant reminder of the resounding solitude of her life, just as the sharp coughs had never failed to evoke thoughts of Arya’s immovable mortality.
She couldn’t have traveled more than a handful of miles from where the body lay before Sansa simply ceased to care. What had once been a shack rose up raggedly on the horizon, hardly a better shelter than her blankets and tarp. But she trudged to it all the same, relieved to find no lingering signs of past occupants…or something else. It would be difficult to say how much time had passed, day nearly as dark as night more often than not, though she knew she slept more than she sat awake. That was a simpler arrangement, exhaustion and malnourishment depriving her of dreams that might make consciousness more appealing. Despite her state, Sansa rarely hungered or burned of thirst. She was dying, in all likelihood, though it was apathy rather than microbes that ate away at what remained of a once-beautiful girl.
Then one morning – or evening, there was no way to tell – an excruciating pain forced her eyes open. Her body, fighting. It took time to adjust to the constant clench and twist of her abdomen, protest at being so poorly cared for. When she found she could stand, Sansa dared emerge from the leaning shelter. A small distance away, a copse of trees sprung up, the ground covered in undergrowth. Her best chance. She moved as quickly and quietly as she could, though in the open space between shack and woods, the girl knew she would perish if anyone were to sight her. Weak and alone, her youth or suffering would draw no sympathy from those even more desperate than she.
It took the scraping of thorns for her to discover it, some feet inside the woods. Blackberries. Easily recognizable from her neighbor’s gardens, when she and another girl would carry a bowl of cream directly into the inky soil to eat them off the plant. What had her name been? Molly? Maggy? Margaery. She had brown hair and hazel eyes, which seemed even more beautiful in her brother’s face. She forced herself to eat slowly; there had been other times of limited supplies where a feast had made the Stark children ill. Each berry burst open with ambrosial offering, a welcoming sting running along her tongue. A pleased groan might have rumbled out of her chest, though it was cut off in fearful hiss as a branch crackled nearby.
She wasn’t alone.
The bush pricked at her as she crouched down, staring through spindly branches to catch sight of its progenitor. He came plodding from the center of the trees with a cursory awareness, as though he was not genuinely concerned about encountering trouble at that precise moment. Sansa crouched lower, knowing that concealment was her only defense. The berries, however, were too bright a target, electric aubergine broadcasting rare nourishment. Her lungs ceased functioning as he stalked closer, two blue orbs mixed in amongst the purple. In the closing distance, she could see no blood, no feral impulse. Only an opportunity recognized. Even if he wasn’t one of them, however, didn’t mean no harm would pass. Sansa tucked herself closer to the ground, and prayed for a miracle.
The swath of earth was arid and barren and sere, and the ground was fissured and desolate, the sand so thin it became like gravel and like gravelly shards rose spokes of flint from the stricken earth, jutting upwards towards the ashen firmament bent above, small and scarcely regarded, and a mortal danger for any flatfooted traveler down that nameless stretch of earth beset on one side by the Pacific ocean, and on all others by that dismal and despair of lifeless country and isolate mountains.
The country was without name; the mountains without moniker; the long and endless road which crossed those mountains too, bared no identify apart from any other road of any other mountains; in times past, the road and mountains and country all had good, strong, Christian names, granted to them either by royal privilege of Spanish conquistadors or the much more flavorless Puritan pilgrims; but Christ and Christiandom had retracted its face from these dead things, and the banality of what came after was so tired, so forlorn, so broken and envious of death, that no one bothered to remember the names of things, and what new names heralded were only spoken in the mouths of children.
Still life continued, as life was wont to do, but the winters were long and brutal, and with each spring civilization as it remained lost another sizable portion of its inhabits either to sickness, to cold, or to melancholy. Some set out down the road to find warmer weather. It is unknown if any survived.
It was there in the nape of nameless mountains, beset on all sides by towers of earth, torn asunder by that nameless stretch of asphalt, that the silhouette of what may have once been something found itself still breathing, still palpitating, still alive. It was berries which had entranced the girl but what she ought have found notice in was the heap of stone and mortar tucked within the enclave of trees. Most structures were destroyed beyond repair; what could still be salvaged was repaired to the best of people’s ability; doors were stood aright, nails were unbent and reused, windows were boarded over. The most beautiful houses the landscape still had to offer were invariably broken, resurfaced, patch-worked, thatched, held together by poor carpentry and the will to make it work. Such houses still in repair enough to provide a modicum of security were almost entirely owned by the wealthy; or to speak more plainly: by those who controlled the food rations. Three hundred meters away from the girl swathed in terror and thorns sat a large, squat, ominous-looking structure; constructed as it were entirely out of natural stone. The building itself was unremarkable, long ago painted white, its colors now echoing the gray of the earth; but spiraling upward from the building was something remarkable: stone jutting nearly above the treeline. A concrete bell-tower, its grim and blackened cyclopean bell still housed within, too rusted to even move, a tribute to a long since unthought-of and rusted God.
But the crunch of twig and gravel underfoot, the alluring sight of plump berries – these were matters of greater import. No ivy-drowned stone, no ancient man-made house of worship could rise above those occasions. Red wasn’t a color easily well-concealed. Not amid the sage-green and glossy black blood of leaf and berry. Even if the man hadn’t been looking, it would have been obvious. Too much color for a landscape of gray and brown. Even unwashed. Even bloodied and muddied and slick with grease. The footsteps stopped.
The barrel of a thirty-ought-six long rifle smirked right at her in all its gleaming metallic glory. Though it was with none of the ferocity of a bloodless killer. Its wielder was stony-faced. Bullets were a rarity, and it was certain there could not have been enough bullets to fill all the weapons which were slung and toted about by the haves or have-nots— but one never knew for certain which guns were loaded and which were not.
“Don’t move,” warned a voice low and caressed by natural chill. “Not even an inch.” Fight or flight was a natural response; especially when someone had nothing to lose, nothing to live for. “Especially not to your left.” Oddly specific instructions. But their purpose would become obvious if even a cursory glance was spared in the named direction. Large metallic teeth only barely concealed by leafy brush. Not meant to kill so much as they were meant to trap. A human could probably free itself, but any wound made by such grizzly razor teeth would almost certainly ensure death by infection – something far worse and infinitely more painful than a clean, quick blow to the head. It wasn’t meant for humans, then. The berries were a natural draw not only to starving wanderers of the human sort, but of the fauna variety. Meat was more valuable than fruit, scarce as it was. That the man had decided to check the trap at the exact moment the girl happened to be pilfering the bush of it’s succulent nourishment was pure luck. Whether that luck was good or bad was yet to be seen.
“Carefully stand up,” he instructed. “Step towards me. Slowly.” He didn’t need to warn what would happen if she didn’t follow instructions. The firearm spoke clearly enough.
In a dun world, it was a simple thing to miss one more brown strap of tanned hide, until it creaked and shifted to reveal gleaming weapon. Sansa understood the workings of firearms, their danger and their utility; father an avid hunter, and brothers who followed suit as swiftly as age and temperament permitted, the daughter learned fragments along the way. Handling, aiming, which end went bang. Unfortunately, it was the same one staring at her with cycloptic precision from across the thicket. Her hand clenched on the branch delicately pinched between two fingers as she scavenged, the bite of small thorns adding crimson to the staining of her palm. She should have stayed in the rickety slope of plywood sheets, drifting into a dreamless sleep where sister and brothers and parents were waiting. A bullet was quick, if the aim was true, but violent nonetheless.
“Okay,” she agreed, voice like sandpaper along a throat still tingling with the acid of her feast. It might not have carried past the bush, having gone unused since the loss of the only other soul Sansa might communicate with. Topaz skittered in the direction he warned, catching sight of grey teeth spattered with bloody rust. That her calf was not snapped between metallic jaws could be put down to sheer luck, if such a thing existed in the world now. Spiky leaves rustled and bowed as she used the bush for prickling leverage to stand, wobbling as she adjusted to the altitude. Her stomach lurched, fullness and movement both making it churn in protest. Sansa couldn’t help it. One hand jerked, far more than an inch, to splay across aching belly as she grimaced, gasping out an apology.
Then she met the man’s eyes. Cold, detached. Lacking in hunger, however, unlike some she had fled in the past. This was a stranger who, for the moment, was preoccupied with safety above all else. That the red-headed waif, looking nearly incapable of keeping down even a handful of blackberries, could be considered a threat was cosmically laughable. Yet in the world as it stood, everyone was a threat. Sansa could respect that. In his position, she would have already squeezed the trigger.
Dusty leaves and undergrowth crunched beneath her feet as she circled to the front of the plant, warmth trickling down limp fingers when she unhanded the brambles. “ – I – I don’t have any food,” she warned. Ratty clothes and the form they hung from was all Sansa Stark contributed to the slate world through which she moved. Unfortunately, there were those who found plenty of value in even offerings as scant as those. Particularly the latter. Flesh still clung to bones as light as a bird’s and she had seen creatures once human slavering over the thought. And she was a young woman beneath the unwashed fabrics, curve and dips and a warm center any half-lonely man could see as an opportunity not worthy of wasting. For such a broken thing, Sansa Stark had a great value to her person, a fact that did not escape the girl as she crept forward on soft feet.
And I’m alone, she thought. An arrangement that might encourage clemency - one slender, starving girl could be easily harried away with the rifle he carried, never to return and disturb the man’s peace. Or instead cement whatever devious thoughts left oily tracks in his mind, dreams of blood and skin and heat. Something in the green of his gaze, a flat, grey quality that reflected the sky and ground and air, forced her lips to move. “Its just me,” Sansa blurted. “I don’t have anyone.”
I’m alone. And now at the mercy of the stranger standing scant feet away.
The man watched her, eyes as gray as the sky hanging above. Twigs snapped underfoot, leaves rustled; the red doe emerged, utterly at the mercy of the hunter standing at the edge of the desolate meadow. Flesh had morphed to stone; the man seemed a statue. Unmoving, unflinching, finger poised precisely on the smooth metal arc of the firearm’s trigger. When she had crept far enough away from the bush and its ambushing traps, he held up a hand, indicating for her to stop.
A quiet chuckle broke the stale air, but it seemed more for show than from any emotion of genuine mirth – the man’s mouth barely crooked upward with signs of amusement. It was sardonic, then. Mocking. Cold. Declarations of no food had no place in a world where humans, lone stragglers and groups all the same, were herded and slaughtered as effectively as cattle had been. When there had still been cattle to slaughter. The girl was nothing but skin and bones, but even bones could be boiled in a soup to fashion a nutrient-rich broth, even skin could serve as nourishment for hunger. The girl had food. The girl was a veritable feast. As succulent and prized as the rabbits or squirrels he’d been hoping to find.
“Your weapons. Toss them.” Gray had raked her over more than once in search of metal protrusions or signs of makeshift arms forming lumpy outlines in the fetid rags that served as her clothing. To no avail. Just because he didn’t see any didn’t mean they weren’t there. All it meant is that she was smart about it. Which she would have to be, to still be alive.
“Where’s the rest of your party?” That she’d claimed to be alone meant nothing to Baelish. He didn’t believe her. Someone of her ilk didn’t survive by herself; even if it was clear she was only barely surviving. The same could be said for most. Strangely polished metal shifted as the rifle was adjusted, barrel lifting scant inches to point towards her midsection. If he were to fire, death would certainly come, but only after a time. She would suffer it, first. The rust-covered bell in the distance, shrouded in foliage, glinted as the cloud cover overhead shifted long enough for the sun to momentarily reappear.
One foot poised over the dry and crackling undergrowth, Sansa wavered with imbalance for a moment before slowly, obviously bringing it down in a final stop. These were all silent commands she had followed before, though never given by another who might find any manner of uses for her. Instead it was her father, with rapid flutterings of hands and head, who would urge his children to pause or advance, hide or run as they traversed the countryside. He had kept them safe, as much as the world allowed, and his gun had always been pointed another way. A brief possibility occurred to the girl, that she could rush him and either force a shot or an unwinnable tussle. In either case, she would be dead, the last Stark vanished, rejoined with anyone that ever gave a damn. It was not the loneliness which threatened to crush her, more so the knowledge that no matter how many miles raised blisters on her soles, Sansa would never again draw close to one who could comfort her, care for her, or even hold her as she died.
That was despair of the more irrevocable sort.
“I don't have any,” she insisted, irritation creeping into her tone. Arya had carried her big brother’s bat until even its weight was too much to bear. She’d almost cried at leaving that last memory of home where they had slept the night before. Almost. Anger always won out over grief in that girl. Arms flapped up as tattered wings, avian demonstration of impotence and vulnerability both. Who would she fight? Where would she fly? “But you’re welcome to check, if you like.” One brow arched in sardonic invitation, a reckless dare for him to step closer. Perhaps the aim of a bullet with questionable existence would be truer; she could see the muzzle angled too low for a clean shot, though assigning it to inexperience, lack of intent, or a tendency towards making others suffer would be folly. Fogged blue only stared, and stared, and stared, while she thought at least there was the sting of something other than bile on her tongue.
Until it rose up to meet the flint of his gaze; were the world more welcoming of poetry, she might have compared it to the barrel of his rifle. Two stares, a single intent. “Dead.” A lone syllable, cutting a harsh path through the silence. Her father’s bones might yet be ivory pillars fallen sideways in a shallow grave - enough of his children had remained to arrange a somewhat proper burial. The rest, she supposed, were lucky enough to be granted a posthumous blowfly shroud of peacocked iridescence, unless carrion birds or desperate men happened upon them first. “I would have taken them the berries if they weren’t.” A day’s walk, little more. That was how far her sister had been from food, shade, life. She could have been saved. Or least breathed her last in a little more comfort than that of a dusty roadside ditch, all of God’s creatures - if that was still who made them - waiting with baited breath for the feast. Eyes squeezed shut and chin tucked down, two clean lines streaking down gaunt cheeks. No show, though he might think it one, simply all the mourning a starved child could afford to indulge.
“I’d rather you kill me now, than later.” The longer they stood there, parted across the glen, the more possibilities occurred to her for what he might do with a body living or dead. Not pleasant vehicles to carry one from the world. “Although I suggest not wasting the bullet.” A high price for her existence, that smattering of powder and lump of lead. Expensive, worth far more than she. Best left for a meatier target - or one with any modicum of fight left to it.
Taking stock of the pitiful creature in front of him brought him neither feelings of misery nor delight. Petyr had seen worse. Far worse. Limbs rotting from the insides, yellow eyes widened and sullen, gaping, black maws opened incredulously, filled with caked and broken teeth. Sullied flesh. Sullied minds. It wasn’t hard to fall out of sorts. The roads were long and dry, the nights cold and unforgiving. Soot-blackened fingers at least meant someone knew how to make a fire. But the grime caked to the girl’s skin was no remnants of ash from a pit; it was the hard, weathered path of a hopeless soul. She had a week. Maybe more, now that she’d filled herself with the bursting pulp of berries. Less if she didn’t find water. Not quite dead, but dying. Whereas the man standing before her was a king, ruling in his makeshift castle of aged stone and rotting wood. A god among insects. A man with breath who stood amongst the breathless.
Part of him believed her. The claims of death and despair. In a world collapsed there was a time for fear and a time for courage, a time to be wary and a time to be bold. But in all times the promise of entrails took first priority. No dim silhouette of a man in the hazy ashen light was going to keep any man or bitch from crossing the road to the satisfaction of their stomachs.
The man’s eyes were cruel, world-weary, wayward ex nihilo, staring towards the girl in front of him who had nothing. He wore a simple cotton shirt and a pair of filthy denim, ancient even by apocalypse standards. His muscles and his body spoke of an almost supernatural health for survival, as if his strength was largely unaffected by the loss of life, love, and everything with it. Even his face retained a glow of living. But the cavity of the soul behind slate gray-green bombardier’s eyes – it was a soul that knew torment. The same sort he saw mirrored back at him. The sort of ache that was the kind of lingering humanity that might repeat its name aloud in the dark when no one was around; the razor line of a tightrope walker along a bridge stretched between civilization and barbarism. And so it simply was that when moisture streaked her face in venomous, saccharine salt, Petyr could not bring himself to raise his gun and unload in her fucking face.
He just couldn’t.
But to allow her to leave would be folly in and of itself. The knowledge of food and where it was located was impossible to erase; to a starving creature, all roads led back to sustenance. Telling her to leave meant the possibility of not only her return to pilfer more of what he viewed as his, but the risk of her finding others, sharing the knowledge, bringing them with.
“Kind of you,” he drawled. “What do you suggest? Strangulation? Blunt force? Death by a thousand cuts?” The man did not so much as a blink.
"Do you wanna die, sweetheart?” A merciful question posed by the reaper in denim with the gunpowder scythe.
Angry knuckles rose up to swipe at the show of weakness. She’d been the only one to cry when the others had died, save for Rickon. But he was only a little boy, capable of nothing more than tears as the journey dragged on and on and on. It was all he knew, the only language he spoke, until death calmed him. Everyone crossed that barrier eventually, too tired, too hungry, too beaten down to weep at the loss of their life because, at the end, it was nothing worth mourning. Loved ones cried for what they had lost months or years ago, not the husk of a person slowly caving in on itself while insects droned on disinterestedly in the middle distance. Sansa was equal parts furious and grateful she was the last - at least none of her siblings suffered the honor, though even after only a few days, the temptation to wish it on them had grown. It couldn’t hurt the dead, after all.
”No.“ She wanted to go back one year, or five, or ten, when this world was pasted emphatically between paperback covers, a fable to scare mankind into treating itself a little better. Dying would remove her from it with shocking permanence, yet there was the impossible kernel of hope, perhaps carried over from those old and battered books, that refused to be uprooted from her breast. Sansa wanted to live. Desperately. "But I will.” By his hand, from starvation, exposure, a stranger in the night. She knew it would happen, and not as an abstraction several decades away. Where he thought in days, she was kind enough to think in weeks. When the tart purple-black burst forth on her palate,months. Yet it was coming, as it had for all the rest.
“I’m not stupid.”
Dry humor. Sarcasm. Concepts that had no place in her existence, frivolities. “You needn’t be put out over it,” she snapped, blue darkening with the briefest flare of anger. “Don’t make me a special case." Just make it quick. Maybe he would just shoot her. At peace with that eventuality, finally Sansa’s eyes drifted to the structure that must comprise his home. A church. Hers had been a family of mixed faith, worshiping the same gods in slightly different rituals. The candles and stained glass that framed her mother’s beliefs delighted the child who imagined herself a princess undiscovered; covered in dust and starving, the stoic face of her father’s deity felt more real. An old building, very old, dilapidated well before things had turned for the worse, held together more by nature than any human effort. Beautiful in its abandonment.
"You knew it had all gone to shit when they ransacked the churches,” she told no one in particular. “They gave out food, set up cots as long as they could, until keeping people together was more risky than turning them away.” Even the atheists arrived for a taste of the Host, when it was the only sustenance for miles. Cannibals, the lot of them, in the most sanctified manner. At the start. “That’s when we left. When they burned Mom’s church.” Her head snapped back to him, blue boring into greenish grey. “Nothing was sacred after that.”
Fear was instinctual. Life, the urge to live, to breathe, to try until you were no longer capable – that was instinctual. Intrinsic components of the human psyche. Of the beast’s psyche. Buried beneath logic and intelligence and every firing brain synapse that separated man and beast was the will to survive. Tears could be expected. Staring down the gleaming metal barrel of death, waiting for the only inevitability granted to each and every person. Even someone who had nothing left would be programmed to fear it. To hate it. To reject it.
“Everyone will.” Existential formalities voiced in front of a place once used for just such the same. Did she believe there was a heaven waiting for her? Or perhaps, in those years where she had slowly wasted away and watched everything around her wither and die, she had done things that would sentence her to a far grimmer destination. Perhaps that was why still she she said no.
It was her nerve which gave him pause, though one wouldn’t know, beyond the unmovable stone of his structure, of his bones and muscle and sludge-pumping heart. It was fire at the end of it. Not resignation. No pleading beggaries or desperate imploring. She dared him by way of mockery. Bold, or stupid. Different all the same. Willing to fight. As frail as she was, she would gnash her teeth until the bitter end. The man blinked slowly, in careful, interested consideration.
Talk of the church, talk of religion, morality, ethics— tell-tale signs of the end. Petyr had no interest in that. It had gone to shit far before the churches were ransacked. Besides, what made the churches sacred? Beyond ancient tenets, falsified rules, someone’s opinion. What made a church untouchable while a pharmacy was fair game? Logic had no place in a time of suffering. A house was only as holy as those who took residence in it. The old stone building she found so lovely was certainly no longer a house of God. For that, the man’s mouth crooked upward at one side in sardonic mirth, and for an instant, there was nothing friendly at all about him.
But mercy wasn’t dead.
The gun lowered. Pointing towards the ground instead of towards the broken girl who reasoned with the ransacker of a church, the sort of man who’d helped to rob her of her faith and all else. The gun’s worn strap was slung over a shoulder until the long metal firearm was diagonal across his back. Then he approached. Slowly, but not with trepidation; only the sort of caution a hunter uses when readying to subdue a wounded animal who might still have the gall to lash out.
“I’m going to check you for weapons. Don’t try anything.” If she did, it was on him; his kindness wouldn’t extend a second time. He motioned for her to lift her arms, and when she did he ran his hands along them, inside and out, before traveling down her torso, frisking each side, around her waist, then down each of her legs. There was nothing remotely sexual about the touch. Nothing familiar, gentle, kind, or even human. The man was concerned only with his own safety. He was looking for instruments she might use to harm him, not appreciating emaciated flesh concealed by filthy clothes. When he stood back up with a long and audible exhale, the glance he spared her was a mixture of skepticism and regret.
“Come on then.” The grass swished around his ankles, brittle leaves breaking apart under boots that seemed too good and sturdy to be true. Turning his back to her might have been viewed as a grievous error; she could grab a rock, a stick, she could jump him. All of these possibilities ran through his mind but were quickly discarded. He was stronger than her. Healthier than her. With the same sort of roguish disregard for certain matters of the soul. It wasn’t pity or empathy that had compelled the man to extend to the sad, filthy waif an invitation to his world. Neither was it kindness or compassion. Man wasn’t a solitary creature. Man was a pack animal. Maybe Petyr had simply been alone for too long. Spending so many paranoid nights in solitude that the words in his head began to mimic the sounds of the wood. As language became simpler so too did his thoughts and actions. Fight. Flight. Hunt. Gather.
The doorway to the ancient church indiscriminately permitted. As a discerning agent it was a lifetime past its prime. At best, it could be considered an abstract impression of a door. When closely inspected one realized that it was only rotting splinters and holes, eaten away by age or something far more nefarious. The hack-marks of an axe could easily be made out. Bullet holes. A place where a door-handle once would have rooted. Beyond the gaping silhouette lived only the expressionless questioning of darkness, of a dim, oily candle burning somewhere out of view. Petyr stopped at the threshold and turned back to face his thieving invader. A bare, simple shift to the side indicated he intended to allow her passage.
He took my advice. Throat clenched in involuntary imitation of pressure soon to be exerted by lean muscled finger. There would be no bullet wasted on Sansa Stark. Refusing to shut away the sight of Death encroaching, unpolished sapphire blazed with angry recognition. The man could kill her, would kill her, and she stood defenseless. A fight might be presented, though it would only usher her towards those lost with broken bones and ruptured skin. A painful principle upon which to stand, one that her bravery did not quite extend to. Stoicism, then, was all the girl could muster. Please don’t let it hurt. I’ve hurt too much. I’ve hurt enough. And then: Please let it hurt. If it hurts at least I know everything before it was real.
Instructions passed unheard; gestures only solicited a bodily flinch away from the blow that did not fall. What is he waiting for? A long stare brought Sansa to the realization that the stranger was waiting for her. Agape, wondering if participation was required, legs tensed with the urge to run even as arms hung limply against protruding ribs. Her arms. Raised in a Christ-like tee, pale parallel branches sagging from a sapling long deprived of cool rain and gentle sun. Lashed by maelstroms, baked upon the dry earth, there was no happy medium to nourish youth, a fact on full display as her body became bare and free to him.
I was pretty once, she wanted to spit out. Boys chased me, begged me to see them on Friday nights. They wanted me. Sansa felt as little as he did, so far as human contact was concerned. It might have been a thorny tangle she was caught in, or a rather directed breeze, for all the comfort his touch brought. Another element to endure, to weather. Stock still the girl stood, though it was apathy rather than strict adherence to the rules that kept her so. A queer sense of insult squirmed in her breast at the purity of motion, the professionalism with which fingers ghosted over clothes and skin to retract sans discovery.
I told you so. Plainly writ in the cock of head and arch of brow, a gesture remnant from the time when veracity might be relied on with greater strength.
He was half-way or more across the clearing before intentions registered. Her condition remained in the same deplorable state as before Sansa’s discovery amongst the berries, withered but alive. Several eager steps ground brittle leaves into crisp dust, small billowing clouds of nature clustering around her ankles, before another jarring halt. He could still be hunting. Lower her guard, lure her away from any prying eyes of man or beast - if there remained a difference between the two - and butcher her within the dank shadows of unholy sanctuary. It might have all been a farce, the contact, the frisking, meant to draw out any watching with breath held in trembling stillness, an approach intended to spur a charge. But she couldn’t run. The snare was set and, perhaps, already snapped closed. Too weak, too tired, too lost, Sansa fell under his mercy at the first glimpse of gleaming sustenance among the thorns.
She followed him.
Quiet and slow was her progress, until the girl drew even with her unlikely host. One cursory stare was all it required for the facade to crumble. Inky shelter unbroken by any but the smallest flame, air cold and unwelcoming, ghosts of gods and saints long defiled all rushed up to fall as a wet rag over her nose and mouth, denying the girl her breath. Claustrophobia. The hand she had braced along the doorway clenched; she could feel a nail crack against the ancient mortar. “I — I can’t…” Backing away, a silent shuffling of heels over the earth. “Please. I’d rather it be out here.” Once the days had existed when so magnificent a structure would have been a boon, worthy of celebration and brittle smiles. Now it was too large, an accommodating tomb in which to seal herself. The slanting boards a few miles from Arya’s body were more welcoming, a far preferable place to die, alone, than shrouded in a stranger’s preferred gloom.
“I’d rather die outside,” she repeated in a frantic whisper, eyes turning with a wide pleading to her most welcoming host.
As with any animal the instinct not to be herded or caged reared. The red girl trembled at the threshold of safety and gave birth to insecurity. Petyr stared at her. Stared whilst she accused him of plotting to slaughter her in the gloomy privacy stone walls afforded. As if she would be permitted such luxuries even if that were his nefarious intent. As if he would sully his abode with her screams, her blood, her waste. Then her logic was dictated only by fear, and Petyr found that understandable.
Animals could be tempted, a trail of food or water to force coercion and appeal to senses of survival and need far greater than fear. Counter-intuitive, perhaps. A starving animal will risk its life to eat, disregarding the inherent danger in the very act of eating, in the chance of death that eating would bring. How better to die? In silent acceptance, with an aching, hollow belly? Or trying? But such games were of no interest to the man with the slung weapon, though such feral tactics were employed towards both man and beast on a near daily basis. That the bush she had feasted from was not plucked bare of its nourishment for his consumption and instead left in the open to beckon forth others spoke a great deal of the way the hunter’s mind functioned. That he was not hungry enough to give-in to the temptation of berry himself spoke something else entirely.
Were he more invested in the girl with her sad stories and her urge to die in the cold gray of a worthless sun, he might have attempted to placate her, to ensure her his intentions were not grave. But company came and went, and he had no reason to appeal to her beyond a momentary lapse in reason in which a selfish need for camaraderie had risen above that of caution. With a nudge of hardened leather toe the splintered door inched further inward. Petyr looked at Sansa, then looked to the yonder gray, casting a nod in its hopeless direction. “Watch your step.” There are traps everywhere, not all of them mine. A dismissal. Freedom. Either he was trying to instill a very unnecessary false sense of security in her or he was allowing her to leave. Before anything else could be said or done, scraping steps carried the man into the dusky belly of the old church, leaving Sansa to stand alone on the stoop.
She clung to the doorway as if it were a raft adrift in the proverbial sea her family had never reached, the only anchor between twin tides threatening to sweep her away. Looking away, at last giving the shadow-drenched sanctuary a proper, unflinching appraisal through the widened entry, Sansa could see that the pool of light spread larger than a mere pinprick and no red eyes blinked out from corners untouched by aurulent halo. Had the man attempted to lure her in further with promises of food or shelter or safety, she would have run until fire burst forth in her lungs. Apathy did not kindle trust, though mistrust began to flake away, slowly, rusty chips caught to flutter on the passing breeze. Were she a threat, she would be dead. Were she a meal, she would be dead. Were she anything beyond a nonentity, she would be dead.
He lurched across her vision into the gloom, swallowed by a church starving for supplicants; finding none it accepted passing demons, welcomed specters beneath its eaves to roost. Forlorn, she swiveled in place to stare out over the forested oasis. If she left, she would die. Even after a few days of nibbling at overripe berries, should Sansa manage the self control to not pluck the bush bare, perhaps gaining the fortitude to seek out another source of nourishment, the roads remained too dangerous to navigate alone. And the girl knew what lurked in her mind, the noxious cloud of mortal surrender lingering on its fringes, ever-watchful for a fracturing weakness to thread through. The company of another might prove to draw it out, extract the poison and render it inert; just as likely that it would enforce the sensation of isolation and concentrate it to lethality.
Both choices frightened her, for so long had the girl journeyed trusting none but her kin that to offer such power to a stranger was both a release and a sacrifice. Watch your step, he joked as Sansa viewed twin minefields, wavering. A breath of atmosphere then inward she plunged, forsaking the word which robbed her of childhood and family and, nearly, hope; could this man’s reality be so much worse? At first her steps clattered after him with the staccato rhythm of one left behind, though they soon slowed to a more sedate pace, lest he gain the impression of a more nefarious pursuit. And so she trailed after him in ragged processional down the broad aisle, pulse a frantic pattering felt in the meat of her palms. “ —– I’m…Sansa,” the gun was informed; it was, after all, her first acquaintance of the day. Arms wrapped around her torso against the chill of enclosed shelter, tucking grey scraps of clothing closer about her person. “…How long have you been here?” Clearly quite some time, to have established traps, a watch, and kept the fortress for his own. Achievements the Starks barely managed even when whole, instilling a note of wonder to gasping voice.
The decor of the church suggested a madman’s barracks— or a cannibal’s manger. All decoration had been stripped; a once lavish church covered in rich tapestries and ancient artworks had given way to unpolished granite masonry. Along the western wall someone had taken a chisel and, with meticulous care, etched singular hash-marks into the worn stone. Each mark was clear, distinct, and recognizable from the others. Then at the end of long rows of hash marks that extended over five-meter long columns, a swath of maroon blood intermingled with silky black ink to make a clear, calculated break. Beneath the break, the same precise pattern began again. There were three and a half planes of hash marks on the wall, and three markers of black blood. That was the first thing anyone set eyes on. No papal warbling, no sacrosanct artifacts. Blood and ink. Ink and blood. Everything splashed on pale stone.
On the worn wooden pews as they were passed, all manner of objects could be spotted. Countless books, papers, and files were scattered aimlessly to and fro across the floor; on the westernmost wall lay a small fire pit caked with the molten ashes of thousands and thousands of such papers and books. Discarded cans of food were nestled hidden among the paper waste, each and every one meticulously polished clean by a human tongue, not a speck of their rich substances wasted on the floor. Cans of peas; cans of greens; cans of yams and red potatoes and beans; cans of spam; cans of chili; cans of cream of mushroom soup: every one pristine, tongue cleaned, and not containing a single drop. Too were there watches, wallets, earrings, tie pins, bracelets, brooches, armlets, anklets; every kind of bauble both precious and not, made of brass, made of silver, made of copper, made of gold, all strewn about the wooden seats of worship like so much trash in a worthless world.
And then there were firearms. Scores of them, many buried along with the refuse, of all different manner and variety: revolvers were predominant among the floor trophies, but on the northern wall a shotgun and a Kalashnikov were long by their shoulder straps, hooked on crooked nails. Emptied of any sort of functional ammunition, certainly, for why else would they be discarded so callously? So irresponsibly? The man spared her not a single look as their footfalls carried them to the far end of the church. There was no worry she would pick up and brandish some weapon. Even if an unloaded weapon would still pack a volatile punch, if seized and slammed to lower back, kidney, solar plexus. She was just an animal to him, a stray dog in need of some care, and animals contained no such ability. They lacked opposable thumbs, and ingenuity all the same. All the red girl in her tattered rags had to use as a weapon was her foamy spittle and jagged fingernails. Things of no worry to the man with the rifle slung across his back.
“Hello Sansa,” Petyr answered. The name itself was an alliterative delight, flowing off of the tongue in two sinuous syllables. He spoke it again in his mind. Sansa. “I’m…Petyr.” Not Pete, his thoughts viciously barked, even though the idea of their acquaintance ever evolving to that level of familiarity was a completely absurd notion. His boots scraped over the small stairs leading up to the pulpit, as thought he were preparing to deliver a sermon. Instead, all he did was turn and give her a sardonic look, a half smile, crooked in the way it sat on his face. “Long enough.” Then his tone dropped to arcadian sounds, vague and indefinite, as though he were aware that anyone could be listening to every word they said. But his eyes became narrow, and singularly distinct in the tone of their meaning. “A better question would, perhaps, be how I am here.” How long was casual, harmless, banal. How drew implications of ethics and morality. Most of decent health could survive, so long as they were willing to stoop to certain levels. But Petyr made no effort to answer the revised suggestion. Instead his arms twisted and stretched, hefting the firearm from his back. His neck craned towards the cobwebbed ceiling, staring at the mold-speckled rafters as if he could, by sheer will, make them incorporeal, make them nothing.
In a moment, the incandescent obfuscation of his cheeks subsided to the dim light through the almost completely filth-darkened windows which decorated the length of the church in primitive portholes residing near the roof. The wan glow set a thin, sickly ichor upon all the jewels and glitter-gold scattered about the floor.
“Are you still hungry? Thirsty?” Flatly stated and with a tone just short of complete resignation. Then he was looking at her, simply yet solemn. As though anything could be cheery in that ashen vacuity of the world.
Sansa marveled at the excess. The excess of wealth, the excess of waste, the excess of stuff. Possessions of any sort were rare, even in once bustling towns, whose contents were long ago looted and scattered to the grey wilds overwhelming the globe. It was far more than she’d seen in weeks, when she and her sister pilfered a rough-spun army blanket, stained with blood and dirt as everything else was, from a tumbledown shelter of moldering boxes. At one narrow bench of worship, the girl paused, hand a weightless brace against its back. Counting the marks of a gruesome calendar, each rough-hewn scar cutting across her own memories.
How long since its inception? What event in her life marked the first jagged gash? Three years. Fitting that they be monitored so permanently, in blood and stone rather than tick marks across brightly printed paper. In an age defined by impermanence, such commandments of days passed were the only law. Survival. An elusive, unattainable goal, for each and every soul departed its meager shell eventually, though not all could claim the lush surroundings of this magpie’s nest.
She wanted to explore. Stop at each pew and run her hands over the trillions of abandoned and collected trinkets, try to imagine a life in which they might fit. A world in which they were not superfluous, but cherished. Sansa wondered if they had all been left here by supplicants or unlucky travelers, or if the man trudging towards the pulpit brought each one carefully inside. For company. For humanity. Sansa doubted his sentimentality ran so deep.
“ ——– and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Nowhere amidst the piles was a Bible spied; perhaps those were the first to burn, or else gilt covers were too encrusted with grime to be discerned among books less holy. Like any other good girl, however, Sansa remembered her lessons. Floods, sacrifices, tribulations, snakes. Much like the existence from which she sought shelter, though now a savior remained prominent in his lacking. “Hi.” To the pulpit, she did not follow, halting between the front row of benches to accept, with eyes slanting towards smoked pit, ominous correction.
Methods were her final concern. Methods amounted to morals, which amounted to the sort of person one became when character was no more than indulgent frippery. Sansa knew not if he meant to warn, to threaten, or simply to explain; shallow breaths - hollow, rasping, exhausted - were the only reply. Insects were repulsive enough to consume; if he found nourishment elsewhere, it was an arrangement whose ponderings she was content to leave in the dry grass between two wary strangers.
As Petyr expanded with indulgent reach, the girl contracted, as though to take up as little of his sanctuary that emaciated form would allow. If not as chattel, what reason he had for inviting her to the seat of his domain remained shadowed. Benevolent impulses were rare and fleeting; Sansa knew if she were to ask in excess, it was the work of a moment to drive her away. Or enforce a more permanent residence. “I’m…I’m a little thirsty,” she lied. Parched was her throat, temporarily sated by aubergine feasting, now drier than at the start as acid and fear worked away within. Food had already been stolen; whether he took it as inevitable loss or irretrievable insult, the girl had no intentions of extending her fault.
“But you don’t…” Cerulean met celadon, bottom lip momentarily worried under probing incisor. What did Petyr expect in return? It had already been established his guest had nothing to barter with, save that which could have been stolen in the copse. “ — You don’t have to.” Give me anything. While they had weathered many hundreds of miles, her feet began a gentle protest at having stood for so long after so extended a slumber. At last she turned, carefully clearing a space on one of the pews, pushing the snaking pile of trinkets towards the end opposite until there was wood enough on which to sit.
Which she did, upon the very edge, lest he take umbrage with so casual a rearrangement and Sansa be commanded to stand once more. “Its just nice to know there’s someone else left,” the girl whispered to interlaced fingers resting limp in the valley formed by close-pressed thighs. Who speaks before he acts, no matter how rare the practice was. “I didn’t realize how easy it would be to forget something like that.”
“And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.” A water-skin was chucked through the air, skidding to a halt where it quietly sloshed in the middle of an aisle, as though its contents were the same as the inimitable glory of the golden sanctuary he spoke of, indeed, as if water to a parched throat was heaven, as far as heaven could be found in a place more likened to hell. Faith will find the man most downtrodden, it will worm its way into even the most staunch of disbelievers, it will provide hope where none existed. Petyr Baelish spent a great deal of time reading the Bible. But it wasn’t faith or absolution that he sought; simply, it had, for a time, been the only reading material available. Before it had been consigned to the fire in favor of warmth: a far more tangible thing to provide nourishment for the soul, as far as he was concerned. “And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven…” Petyr listed across the old church dais, one finger in the air as though a conductor ready to direct his symphony. “—and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” The same finger spiraled towards the ceiling, before falling unceremoniously to his side.
The man came to a stop directly behind the podium, planting his hands on either side of it, curling fingers over the worn wooden edges, staring towards the emaciated girl he had so graciously elected not to kill. Was he so unlike a God? The red-headed waif would not have been the first he’d saved— but certainly the first when it came to firm matters of life and death. Being alive meant very little when a great many might have otherwise wished for death.
“What have you loosed?” Petyr smiled towards her, a vacant expression that did not quite reach his eyes. Did Sansa believe in heaven? In God and the Devil and a thousand thousand saints? It was a pious-looking girl who sat before him on an old and dirtied pew, surrounded by piles upon piles of worthless shit. One more bauble to add to the dragon’s lair. Was it not pure and innocent maidens that were sacrificed to such creatures in the hope of mercy? How innocent was she, he wondered. Would she be as useless as she looked helpless? Any person who still quoted the Bible in any meaningful way was deserving only of mockery. Did she think herself a Job? Tested for her loyalty? Punished for nothing other than a cruel God’s whim to prove a point?
"I know,” he bluntly replied, as she offered up the notion that he did not need to help her. To give her anything. To spare her life. Baelish was well aware. But in a dun world nothing was free; he imagined she wanted to know what the caveat was. What would he expect from her if she unscrewed that cap and let the water run down her mouth, splash against her tongue, fill every porous crack and crevice? What indeed.
A soft laugh, dry and caustic, echoed through the church, released by the man standing at the pulpit, as though offering her a benediction. “There’s plenty left.” Certainly that must be true, for still the roads were littered with dusty footprints of hosts unseen, still there were the trailing columns of smoke in the distance of fires started and left burning, still there were sounds sometimes heard sailing on the horizon that no animal was capable of making. Why did he laugh? At the naivety that someone could find comfort in such a thought?
Petyr leaned forward, easing his arms in firm prop to the pulpit until he was resting on them, eying Sansa in a studious, scrutinizing way that would no doubt make her feel very small, sitting quietly amid someone’s painful and grand efforts to retain an ancient wealth. But all gods pass judgement. “How long have you been on the road?” Not that long, if she thought it nice to stumble across someone like Petyr, for the simple fact that he was alive. Long enough to weather the pains of non-existence, but not long enough to know better.
John? Or was it Luke? The Sansa Stark of several years ago would have known, studious in faith as well as academics. Never did she undertake a task half-heartedly: coursework, youth choir, dancing lessons, shared sewing projects with her mother that Arya abandoned within a week. Yet knowledge did not grant faith without aid. Her mother’s patient lessons, her father’s stoic endurance, the beauty found in the world through which she once walked. Such were the qualities that instilled in Sansa her unyielding convictions, persuasions vanished from the road traveled now. Oh, the girl believed in God as firmly as when holy water trickled down over her brow. Trust, however, no longer remained.
For what deity could dare take so much of his children, to give only suffering in return?
Hardly any room remained to sit, much less shift in discomfort under the pressing attentions of impromptu sermon. She had only meant to call to mind Peter, cornerstone to a far more sacred chapel than this. How droll, that millennia later the apostle’s namesake constructed about himself a new sanctuary against new foes. Or perhaps the evils of old had risen again, horrors exposed without the mask of modern comfort. Cerulean did twitch away at the slopping of Adam’s ale down the grimy floor covered over in shuffling footprints. Dry throat became parched in that instant; temptation, possibility always brings into stark contrast one’s suffering. Only the preacher’s question recalled her attention to towering pulpit, auburn brows wrinkling together in true thought.
“Nothing,” she admitted to crossed ankles. “Everything.” One shoulder bobbed noncommittally. Those words don’t mean anything anymore. “I was only trying to be clever. I’m sorry.” Fingers fidgeted and laced in her lap, a nervous working of digits that ceased only with squeezed eyes and a long, steady breath. Indebtedness, frailty: unavoidable impressions in the care of a man whose last act had been to point a barrel between blue points of light. But weakness? Sansa had weathered so much, surely the dark pleasure taken in standing above her could be endured, overcome, matched. When her gaze lifted again, it was steady. Serene. Blank.
Petyr could kill her. She could die, there, soon. Was it so different at the hands of another human, rather than the slow, crushing asphyxiation of exposure?
Sansa nodded. “Okay. Good.” There was no reason to remind him; lingering manners, perhaps, from afternoon social calls and weekend slumber parties. Sitting made all too clear the exhaustion laying dormant in parched marrow, groaning joints protesting their trials even as she stood again, seeking to ease them. Seemingly vanished was her concern of presenting the man with her back, turned as it was while the girl strode towards the waterskin. The pouch was cool, shockingly so, from its shaded shelter; Sansa’s fingers prodded and swept over the refreshing contrast when a laugh reverberated behind her.
“Not people,” she countered, lifting life-saving fluid against her ribs, clutching it, and turning to survey his pulpit from the center aisle. Just holding the water gave her the appearance of reinforced strength. Not health, worn as she was. But strength, somewhere at her center. “Those aren’t people.” Sansa had seen them, stalking the countryside like bands of jackals, hyenas, swooping about like vultures. Consumers of carrion, thriving on the opportunities presented by misfortune much like the iridescent blowflies making up her family’s funeral shrouds. “Those are animals.” Not like you, might have been the implication, but there was time yet to prove the assumption wrong.
Glancing aside, pondering retaking her seat, Sansa instead made her way down the dusty aisle towards Petyr. Like a bride. Save for downcast eyes, grave expression, road-worn garb, and sustenance clutched where roses or lilies belonged. Like a ghost then, drifting towards memories of life. “Long enough.” If it was inadvisable to parrot back his own evasion, Sansa displayed no trepidation. “A few months. Maybe its been a year. I never had the luxury of a calendar.” Sapphire crawled towards the smears and chisels on the wall opposite, then back to Petyr. “Mom and Dad kept us safe as long as they could. Our city held out longer than most.” Looking over one shoulder, then the other, the bounty of trinkets was taken in a second time. Sansa clutched the waterskin closer to her belly, still untouched. “It must have taken you a long time, collecting all this.” But why? “Or…was it here…before…?” Before what?
It had only been the verses which directly followed her own. Of course she wouldn’t recognize them. Bible verses were memorized for the sweet sounds of their fleeting brevity, and rarely taken for the greater surrounding context in which they existed. Much like Petyr. Much like Sansa. To him, she was just a dirty, starving wretch, presented entirely in that sense. There was no cause to hear of her haggard past, or dare to think of what might come in her future. The judgement had been made by what he saw. What he knew. What he decided was worthy of quotation, in the context of the reality in which they lived.
Petyr smirked.
Nothing. Everything. Perfect answers for an imperfect question. Words written by men, not by any God. From his vantage he could watch as her fingers worried together, as blue gaze wilted and lowered as though she risked offending him. Or offending someone. The mark of a girl who still had the unfortunate ways of caring about her. Or perhaps not. At least, not in all ways, as she so aptly demonstrated when she turned her back to him in order to fetch the watery offering. It was instinct again – instinct mired with exhaustion. It was clear she cared if she died; perhaps it was only in the matter of how she died that became the question. Thirst would ease her immediate suffering, and there was a possibility that could ease the suffering of death. So far as death could be considered a suffering, rather than a mercy.
“We are all animals,” he retorted. Anatomically, genetically, theoretically, subjectively. A handful of years ago Sansa would have been lured in, much in the same manner in which she had. She would have been given food, water, shelter, clothing. Then she would have been locked away, held down, branded with a cattle iron. Before that galled and blistered ‘B’ on her thigh had even fully healed she would have been thrust into the arms of men willing to trade food, arms, supplies for the benefit of holding and having a woman. Then once her cunt had grown black and withered and scabbed over with some sort of untreated syphilitic condition she would have been taken out and disposed of no more kindly than a rabid dog. But that was before, when people had things to spare in exchange for sex. Now Sansa would bring Baelish no more use in those terms than a garden rake or a toy rocket ship. Not that informing her of her worth, or lack thereof, would be conducive to anything.
Petyr laughed. A few months. The sound was rough, dry, as though the man had forgotten how to make such a jovial expression, and indeed that might be true. “Ahhh,” he droned. “The greatest irony of the haves and the have nots.” Petyr seemed entirely too amused. The affluent lived in their cloistered cities, walls erected to keep out poverty and disease when the end came knocking, came blustering, came begging, came weeping. Yet it was now those who had been seen as sickly and weak who reigned supreme in the after-world, in the condition of man’s misery which had rendered green into gray, blue into black, a brilliant color-wheel into swatches of bland monochrome. Petyr left the pulpit with a scuff of booted feet, taking his rifle with him. “You must feel terribly inconvenienced.” It didn’t seem fair that he would mock her survival, her luck at having not been among the first to be thrust into a world lacking sunlight or rain or even the barest threads of humanity. He traveled down the steps, walking towards her, then past her, careful not to brush by her.
"It’s not mine,” he called back. “Someone else had a hard-on for all this shit.” Someone else. Who? The person who had inhabited the church prior to Baelish, if not immediately then certainly at some point. What had caused the bloodied hash-marks to end? Of course it wouldn’t make sense to haul the loot outside and make the church an even more obvious a structure than it already was. But how could anyone live like that? Surrounded by worthless once-treasures, cast aside in incredible heaps that reeked of other people’s most precious memories. How could anyone live amongst such hungry ghosts?
"Wait here.”
It was as vague a directive as any. The man didn’t return for two hours – maybe three. By the time he did the sun had gone down and the only light in the church was the flickering flame of that oily candle, which miraculously didn’t seem to have melted away even an inch. When Petyr opened the church door, he did so with a concerted measure of caution. One could never be certain someone hadn’t come to take up residence in his absence— he couldn’t even be sure the girl didn’t mean to ambush him.
“Sansa,” he said. Not as a question, but as a statement. Are you here? Her name echoed. Eyes scanned the pews, the ramshackle arrangement of shadowy shapes that could so easily conceal a person. The rifle was in one hand; a rabbit hung by a wire snare dangling from the other. When he finally spotted her at the far end, neck craned towards him, a sense of relief roiled through him. He hadn’t even been aware of the anticipation and anxiety miring in his chest until it ceased to exist. The lump of dead animal was held up.
“You know how to skin?”
His laughter nettled. Not to say that Sansa expected cooing sympathy, a tender brush of fingers across sooty brow meant to ease the weight of starving, shivering sufferings. But she had not complained. Petyr asked, then received an answer in turn. Hiding away had not, in the end, guaranteed survival of parent or child. Sansa, however, learned quickly: what berries could be picked, how best to muffle one’s steps in a dry wood, what best built smokeless fires. The girl was not helpless, yet hers were skills acquired in the context of a pack, several members working in concert to endure. Removed from them, body and spirit both deteriorated until what talent she had meant nothing when compared to the opportunity to rejoin her family.
One glance between the two occupants of that battered chapel clearly revealed who had and who had not - healthy, sheltered, and supplied, Petyr’s existence far surpassed what hers had become. The waterskin was clutched tighter against her ribs. He was successful enough to share. In the light of such plenty, how could she possibly think to look down upon the man simply for her good fortune of lingering behind city walls a while longer? “I feel alone,” Sansa ground out. Didn’t Petyr? Jewels and books and cans and clothes and guns all made for useful tools, though they served as worthless company. There was no time to spare for feelings of inconvenience; she had long grown past the days of thinking that, should one resent them long and hard enough, conditions would change.
Sullen-faced, she watched him pass back down the aisle, only leaning away slightly as they drew even. Petyr’s carriage was casual enough, the distance spurred more by formless reflex than any immediate sense of danger. “Can’t you use it then?” Turning, blue followed the man’s progression until he was only a silhouette framed in the door, a thin shadow cutting across all that shit. Gemstones worth as much as pebbles, books prized for flammability rather than knowledge, firearms rendered useless by a lack of lead. Wealth rendered irrelevant, loomed over by that macabre calendar. Though she made no motion to follow. still Sansa’s body swayed as if halting at his command. Petyr trusted her? Then again, pews upon pews piled with the trinkets of another’s obsession would not merit the fretting, especially when compared to the risk inherent to dragging a strange girl back with him into the woods. She retreated, wordlessly, back towards the pulpit as rotted wood met its frame with a dull thud.
A quarter-hour, more or less, passed before the skin was at last unstoppered. Having suffered dehydration before, Sansa knew better than to guzzle; small sips every few moments, waiting to see if even water would be too rich. It was a miracle the berries had stayed down in her present state. Your body needs it, her father had said, but not all at once. What you feel is impulse, not instinct. An important difference, one you must remember now. And so she sat, leaning heavily against the wooden stand, until breath came a little easier, stomach felt a little fuller, and her throat could work in a smooth swallow. A dull but productive way to pass the time, one which barely halved the fluid given. Sansa hadn’t a clue how precious any of his stores were, whether a dozen more skins lurked somewhere or if this was meant to last him a week. More could be taken, but the difference felt was profound enough.
The door groaned open while she pressed the remaining water from one end to the other, idle sloshing a more appealing focus than questions of safety or survival. A jerk of chin, an animal alerted, was her only motion. Petyr. It was difficult to see over the backs of church benches; one hand braced to stolid wood, Sansa found her feet. “Yeah. Petyr?” His name rustled on moth’s wings towards the entrance. At his question, she began to nod emphatically. “Rabbits are easy.” She’d never done the killing, that fell to Robb and father; the one time they’d taken her, in the hopes of alternating hunting parties with three able participants, a snare had caught a young hare still alive. Terrified, grounding out screams uncannily human, the poor animal put up a valiant fight - one Robb hoped his sister would end with a humane twist of hands. That exercise failed miserably, Sansa near to weeping over the little thing’s fright. Already dead, however, and they amounted to nothing more than meat. Skinning and cooking, then, became her assigned tasks.
“Do you keep the pelts?” She had lined Rickon’s shoes with them, when he began to sob about not feeling his toes. “Its a different cut,” Sansa continued, edging back down the steps and towards her unlikely host. “At least, the way I was taught.” Coming up to him, slim fingers extended to form a loose curl about the wire, though she made no tug of possession. Her free hand ran over one drooping ear and down along its flank. “Scrawny fellow.” Like everyone else. “But soft. I…I can clean him too. If you like.” Sansa dared a smile. It was nice, having Petyr back. Hardly even acquaintances for more than a few hours, yet that served as enough to make the girl pleased by his return. Anything was better than being alone. Even the uncertainty of an armed man in an old church, with no promises to give.
Gray eyes watched as she navigated past the piles of abandoned treasure and wove her way down the aisle towards him. It surprised him, strangely, that she would be so eager and willing to take possession of the dead critter. Why should it? Anyone who had survived this long would need to be well-versed in the ways of hunting, scavenging, and food preparation, and yet – something about her seemed entirely too saintly to perform such acts as draining blood or peeling an animal’s skin from its flesh. As if underneath the layers of dirt and muck smearing her face was a cherubic smile and glowing skin. With some skepticism, Petyr released his hold on the snare, allowing the rabbit to fall into Sansa’s hands.
“If you want,” was his only reply. Did he keep the pelts? Should she clean it? If she wanted to. The man’s attire very clearly did not consist of a hodgepodge patchwork of animal skins – though such a sight was not uncommon. His shoes had never rotted out to the point of needing a buffer of fur lining, his supply of old-world garments had never run low. In such ways, the differences between them became obvious. A frown marred his features over the comment on the scrawniness of the creature, as though Petyr’s own pride was somehow involved. “Yeah…” he sniffed, distastefully. “The rest were empty.” Just how many traps did he have out there? Enough for his trek in checking them to have taken a couple of hours. Or else he was tending to other matters entirely.
Sansa’s smile, diminutive as it was, was disarming. Perhaps because the drive behind it was no raucous punchline or forced by skittering fingers racing over sensitive flesh. Its inception was something simple. Something real. A fundamental reaction to human interaction. Petyr had almost forgotten what it looked it. Even so, the gesture wasn’t returned. What he offered her instead, from the depth of a pocket, was a sizable folding knife. With it, she could easily slice circles about ankles and wrists and neck and pull away the rabbit’s pelt to do with as she saw fit. Just as easily, however, she could turn it on him, gash his throat, eviscerate his midsection. There was not much to fear from a wasted and withered girl. A wasted and withered girl with a weapon became a more formidable prospect. Yet that prospect did not seem to bother him. If leaving her behind, alone, in his warehouse of junk had spoken to trust – what did giving her a weapon speak to?
“Did you rummage around?” he asked, eyes shifting from the rabbit to her face. With a bland gesture he nodded towards some nondescript area of the church, though no prompting was necessary. “Find anything?” The lead insinuated that Petyr assumed she had. Assumed that she’d been looking around the entire time he was gone. Is that not what any sensible person would have done? Would she be seen as a daft fool had she failed to scavenge for weapons? For food? Or would it be seen as an insult if she were to admit to having a look around? Was it a trick question, meant to gauge something about her? Some personality trait that either was or was not inherent to survivors? Or was it just a question, as banal and innocuous as the spouting of bible phrases has been?
“Do you know how to make a fire?” The fact that a candle still flickered at the back of the church, casting ghastly, undulating shadows of darkness and light throughout the interior of that rundown house of worship meant that he did.
Teeth caught the corner of lower lip, twisting her smile into something no less tentative, far more girlish. Instead of an eagerness to appear competent, Sansa would appear eager to please, to demonstrate skills long rendered moot by lack of game and vigor both. I have some use, spoke the faint glimmer in cobalt eyes. Let me stay. Let me live. You’ll see. Fingers closed into a fist easily, reflexes restored at least in part by the healing confluence of water and shelter and rest from the simple effort of being. Though declared scrawny, his catch retained a heft that tempted her stomach towards grumbling. Would he share, after offering so much already?
“No point in keeping it nice,” she shrugged, “if you aren’t gonna use it.” So little had been seen of the man’s sanctuary, his existence; while clothed in garb well-worn yet unaltered, perhaps other tasks were assigned to the leavings of his meals. Best, then, not to discard what might be seen as precious before being given leave to do as one saw fit. “And its the biggest one I’ve seen in weeks.” Frown had not gone unobserved, met with graceful compliment rather than stumbling apology. A different girl entirely spoke with Petyr over the catch, reinvigorated as only the impetus of purpose might achieve. Once she had navigated environs no less vicious, only refined enough to keep such bestial inclinations to its undercurrents. Above all else, Sansa Stark remained a consummate survivor.
Though not a killer; what heft he bequeathed to empty palm called to mind a tool, not a weapon. Such simple things before all this, knives were now impressively utilitarian: carving, hacking, slicing, skinning, stabbing, until an obstacle took on value. Or, conversely, lost all its snarling threat. Sansa thought only of the former, already remembering in mind’s eye those first nicks in a pelt that would reveal the pale musculature beneath. It was not that the girl clung to overly altruistic ideals, or immediately trusted her host as she would her own blood: Petyr did not kill her, Petyr offered her water, shelter, and now granted her the vivifying possibility of a task to complete. What fool would kill a man such as that? Antiquated it might sit in his view should she ask, but Sansa believed in debts incurred and debts repaid. Properly, with the fatal quality of integrity attached.
“No,” she answered, truthfully. The blade, never unfolded, settled to the bottom of one ragged pocket. “I was just trying to drink, and rest. There’s plenty left,” Sansa promised. At the end of his snare, the diminutive hare started on a pendulous swing as she gestured briefly towards where the water skin lounged beside the pulpit. “I wasn’t sure…” The girl shrugged, finally meeting his stare. “ – I didn’t want to take too much.” One heel scraped in the aisle’s silt, Sansa beginning a tentative shift towards the far wall. Hardly capable of adhering to any standards of sterility, she still hoped for a better place to clean his catch than the dusty floor on which they stood. “I wouldn’t even know where to start if I had.” The worthless glitter of collected jewels, so appealing to the girl of one year, five years ago? The shrinking pile of unmolested books, written word long vanished from her days? Or the scattered heaps of weapons and clothes, various and sundry implements with which another day might be reached? No. He had offered water, so water she took and nothing more.
Petyr’s mention of fire seemed to at last spark recognition in cobalt of the wavering candle to which they drew nearer. “Sort of?” she confessed with a wince, grateful now that the rabbit had given her a chance to espouse skills more readily displayed. “Technically I do, but…” But not really. In possession of matches or lighter or even a flint stone, Sansa could easily build the proper arrangement of kindling and branches to bring forth a blaze. Yet surrounded by naught but bracken, she could hardly rub two sticks together and garner smoky reward. “ – But I think it was really just luck,” she confessed with sheepish shrug. Reaching the steps, Sansa looked from side to side in deliberate motion. “Is there someplace you’d rather I…?” Glancing over to him, the animal bobbed in lieu of finishing her question.
It was amazing to Petyr how easy it all was. How it still was. As easy as it had ever been. Wayward girls and women, worn down by the sun and the road, so desperate for even a single shred of kindness that they were willing to overlook all other sensibilities which told them to run. That gut feeling in the pit of one’s stomach became easier to ignore when overwhelmed by thirst, hunger, loneliness, desperation. Petyr treated Sansa how he had treated all the rest; Sansa responded in kind. Like riding a bike, the motions were made more out of instinct, more out of habit, than anything else. Petyr Baelish was not a person to be trusted, yet they trusted him all the same. Every last one.
And so did she.
The red of her hair was pretty enough, her skin was not covered in scars or insect bites, or split by unforgiving weather conditions – blasting winds and blistering sun. Oh, she was skinny, but not so far off from a point where she might instead be called slender. Petyr wondered if she still bled, or if her body had kicked in, screaming and thrashing, demanding such lush nutrients no longer be expelled. Someone, somewhere, would take her. Someone would devour her. Petyr caught himself from staring at her, stilling, watching the knife disappear into one of her pockets. “There’s a well; you don’t need to conserve.” Until it was that the well ran dry, as everything eventually did. Matters for another time. Water was the one thing no body could function properly without. Even food could be forgone for long enough to find another source, days, even weeks if necessary. The same was not so for water. Baelish didn’t ration water.
“You start at the back. Or at the front. Or wherever you please.” The sentiment was clear enough: there were no rules. “I’ve combed through every piece. I look through it still, sometimes.” In the evenings, when the sun was dim and lent easy rays of light that did not threaten to blind when bounced off of golden plating or jeweled facet. When it was a glittering sea that still managed to make him pause and appreciate it for the lovely nothing that it was. “The guns are useless. They work, far as I can tell, but there’s no bullets.” Which begged the question of whether or not his own, arguably antiquated, firearm still had firing power left or if it was all just a ruse. Bullets for such an odd and rare rifle would have to be even harder to come by than a common pistol. “You could probably bludgeon me with some of that shit, but you won’t find anything traditional.” Maybe he was telling her that to save her the effort, or maybe he was simply letting it be known that he didn’t trust her. That he shouldn’t, and in turn, she should not trust him, either.
Petyr creaked up the stairs behind her, pondering on how technically one knew how to create a blaze, and how luck factored into it. Had she prayed to the lightning gods to strike a pile of dry leaves and twigs? A small twitch of two fingers pointed her in the direction of an old, but large, cutting board. Despite the darkened stains which insinuated blood or perhaps berry, it seemed clean. If he had told the truth, and there was a well, then there was no reason not to wash away the sort of things that would only invite disease. Looking around, it became obvious that even though the church itself was stacked high and crowded with all manner of clutter, that the contents were, by and large, clean. There was dust everywhere, to be certain, and thickly layered at that; bits of dirt were tracked in along the main aisle; but the raised pulpit area especially was nearly immaculate. Perhaps that was why, in one corner, there was a neatly-rolled bedroll tucked away beneath a bench.
As it turned out, Petyr had no intention of teaching Sansa how to build a fire. Or even making one himself. It was a small, portable grilling pit with a grate atop and a pile of kindling inside that served. Ignited by a match. Nothing so glamorous as smoking twigs or keenly placed shards of glass. As the meat cooked and roasted over the contained heat, Petyr grew increasingly agitated, taking to checking the entrance of the church a handful of times, and even slipping outside into the darkness more than once to survey the area. The smell of roasting meat wouldn’t carry far from an enclosed building, but Baelish seemed unwilling to take the risk.
When it came time to eat, Petyr wanted no part of the roasted rabbit. “It’s yours. We’ll split the next one.” he’d said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Similarly, when it came to sleep he insisted she take the comfort of padded bedroll while he relegated himself to a pew after clearing a portion off. Then it was sleep. Darkness. Quiet save for the distant rumblings of thunder somewhere far off. Later, it was the muted pings of rain hitting a weathered roof and stone, streaming through dead trees, soaking into the arid earth.
Then it was a calloused hand roughly covering her mouth, a body pressed up against her from behind, an arm wrapped around her midsection, holding her immobile, and the hoarseness of breath against her ear.
Trust. A strong word, dense with compiled history; too strong for what Sansa Stark felt towards Petyr. More comfort than the dusty road or empty woods offered, a small fraction of terror abated by trigger unsqueezed. That did not mean ears were not pricked towards light treads, eyes watchful of those plays between light and shadow which warned of swift attack. “A well,” she repeated, tasting the words as much as she had the cool liquid. “I’ll remember.” As though he cared for her continued upkeep, at least to the point of finding reassurance in two simple words.
Beside the pulpit, she turned back to look on the breadth of his domain. His domain. “None of its mine; I didn’t want to snoop.” Had the church been discovered empty, perceived as free of ambush or booby trap, Sansa would have pilfered through every pew, eyed each emptied tin for traces of unspoiled food, perhaps even taken one of the firearms or a pocketful of precious gems.; should any of it prove less worth than the energy expended in its transport, no one would pay any mind to another tiny heap of discarded scrap. But she had only seen the structure because of Petyr, only entered it at his behest, and antiquated notions of respect, boundaries, at times continued to dictate her conduct.
“I won’t bludgeon you,” Sansa muttered, scooping up the water skin as she approached the stained block of wood. Grimy hands were rinsed clean with a splatter of water on the floor, another slosh wetting the board; hardly an antiseptic procedure, though any opportunity for fresh-caught meat would be poorly spoiled if tainted by muck. “Not unless you make me.” Girl and rabbit both flopped onto the floor, knife fished out from its pocket and prised open. Offense, hunting, was not the method to her survival; defense, but of course, yet mindless attacks for potential gain remained well beyond the scope of Sansa’s thinking.
Skinny had been a kind description of Petyr’s catch, though whatever other evaluations she might have made went unvoiced. Food was still food, and with her stomach still of dubious reliability, only he stood a chance of truly suffering from lack of nourishment that evening. By the time grey smoke rose up from kindling - did he have so many matches to use so flippantly? - and heat pulsed in gentle waves from the metal bowl, the beast sat skinned beside its pelt, which had been neatly bundled around innards and discarded gristle. Anxiety trickled from the air into her pores as Petyr migrated from pit, to door, to forest and back again. Was he expecting someone, or someones, or did encroaching darkness simply inspire an increasing awareness of one’s vulnerability?
Contrary to the stone of unease sitting heavily in her gut, Sansa remained. If it was Petyr who meant her harm, then she would hardly reach the door before he seized her; if it was a faceless foe beyond the shadows, no better chance would be had alone in the open than bunkered down with him. The next one, her thoughts echoed as she picked at the muscle of one roasted thigh. He would allow her to say for more than one meal? Sansa tried to demur, insisted that she would hardly finish the animal on her own, only to leave little more than bones and scorched patches of skin behind.
Quite similar was her reaction to the sleeping arrangements: stiffer than a bed of leaves, yet lifted away from drafts and insects with a sheltering roof above, wooden benches were no imposition on her comfort. Debt began mounting between them, of water and meat and cushioned rest; taken separately, the gestures might remain as leftover scraps of humanity, brushes of kindness meant to ease a traveler’s passing. Together, though: together they brought auburn down in contemplative furrow, wondering when they would be referenced and repayment demanded.
In the dark, Sansa rested. Fear and digestion kept her awake, blue eyes staring up to the cracked and weathered ceiling swallowed up by night. Periodically she would turn to face the chapel proper, watching for the lift and fall of Petyr’s shoulders, the continued stillness of the door beyond. While she intended to remain conscious until dawn, it was from sleep that the girl was roused. Hypnotic, the steady breathing of the man; tempting, the softness beneath her and the exhaustion in her marrow.
Instinct, however, suffered no bleariness of an early awakening: thrashing, feet pedaling backwards against unknown shins, a terrified sob made it no further than the stranger’s palm in her fruitless struggle. Another moment was spent wrestling above the bedroll, yet whoever curled behind her boasted a strength the girl had not possessed for many weeks, if ever. Frantic, desperate, Sansa did all that remained: opening her mouth as if to bleat again, it was instead two rows of teeth which clamped down in harsh bite upon rough flesh.
Not unless you make me. Words that echoed in the sweat-slickened mind of Baelish as teeth sunk into his flesh – defensive teeth, for had he not made her? Was there much of a difference between being bludgeoned and being bitten? Though one might seem worse, more violent, more insurmountable in the face of dire injury, both might have the same effect. Certainly when one considered the implications of a bite that broke skin, that sought to rend and tear, like the animals that lived inside of everyone. Even inside the diminutive red bird. A bite which tore the skin could easily lead to an untreatable infection, most especially when immersed in environs which were crawling with the sort of unsavory bacteria that would love to worm its way into an open wound.
Copper splashed onto her tongue. The man’s fingers only tightened around her face— that was instinct, too. The smart thing would have been to loosen his hold, to allay his grip and thusly part of her fear. To respond to violence with another sort of violence, at least, an action in that same vein of urgency, that only perpetuated the act, and did nothing to assuage it. A sound of pain echoed against her, through gritted teeth. He was so close. Wrapped around her as though he meant to strangle her, and certainly visions of an anaconda coiling around its unfortunate choice of prey would not have been out of place in a mind swirling with only the most panicked of visions. It was muffled though, that sound. Controlled, as much as one could control those sort of things. Then there was spittle, but not a pointed, degrading glob of it – it was tiny flecks, of air pushed through teeth. Something like a shush, though far less susurrous, far less silky.
“Stop,” he whispered, and it was barely there at all. “Stop.” There was a sad sort of desperation to it. It wasn’t a tone of demand at all, but a tone of begging. The sort of sound a despondent man would make while imploring to his God, to help him. To please, God, help him! They were flush against the wall. Petyr had pulled her beneath the small bench shunted up against it. The same place the bedroll had been neatly tucked beneath the evening prior. At some point during the night, the dancing flicker of the oily candle had gone out. There was nothing but darkness. Darkness.
And the sound of footsteps.
Heavy, slow. A man’s footsteps. No, no. More than one. Two sets. The sound of a lighter: snick, snick, snick. Sparking but never catching. And a long, low whistle. How glorious, for a songbird to have taken roost in the rafters! A lark, a thrush, a cardinal. Except there was no mistaking that sound for a bird. Petyr’s breath, beside her ear, seemed louder than all of it.
Esophageal muscles cinched tight, as frightened of infection as the shadowy figure coiled around her back. When able, meat was consumed cooked rather than raw; wounds cleaned and bound; any and all breaches, natural or inflicted, in that delicate barrier of skin tended to with apprehensive care. Antibiotics did not exist. Fever pills, pain relievers, surgery - at best a roughshod amputation might be possible, though it exposed one to a host of complications. No longer could one rely on treatment: prevention stood as the only hope for survival.
Yet even the threat of death, slowly eaten away by microscopic foes, did not muffle the immediate thrill of danger at feeling a warm constriction, a palm which nearly suffocated, the heaving breath of one intent, she thought, on killing. Sansa wriggled again, a tiny sound of fear choked out softer than a mouse into the disembodied hand. Futile were her motions, dragging them both along the floor rather than loosening her binds. All the while she took sharp, greedy breaths though her nose, too aware of the sluggish trickle her carmine reward began making towards her throat. I am going to die, Sansa realized with a clarity of thought poetically bequeathed by the care of he who would bring it about. Tense, she awaited the scrabble of hands through her clothes, the press of him, hard and hot, against her back.
Instead: stop. Terrified, a child’s voice, the pleading whimper of one unaccustomed to relying on any other. But undeniably the word of Petyr: Petyr, who wound close behind her; Petyr, who endured biting and kicking for silence; Petyr, who now seemed so obviously disinterested in taking of her flesh or her life. Sansa stilled. Immediately. Then a slow lean into his chest, the choice of quiet and cooperation over dissent. By increments her topmost arm eased free of his grip, curling instead atop the man’s own, bringing it tighter about her waist.
Someone must be nearby. Preoccupied with her attacker, still hearing little more than the panicked rush of blood in her ears, Sansa knew not of their unwanted company until breath whistled out between lips. Was its progenitor impressed by his discovery? Was he summoning others? Back, back into Petyr she squeezed, eyes shut as the girl sought shelter, protection, life. Above her, the wooden bench seemed to bear down with menacing weight; if the man - men - climbed past the pulpit, found them hiding, there would be no escape. Noiseless, she began to tremble. Every muscle cried out to run, run, run! Sansa had eaten, indulged in a skin of water: surely that was enough to outpace two strangers? Instead she wedged back, tighter, against the man; breathing hardly at all, brief periods of brave control ceasing the tremors, her chin ducked and jaw loosened as Sansa willed them both invisible to approaching steps.
The building was ancient. Constructed well before notions of fire safety or maximum occupancy had ever seen the light of day. There was one entrance. One exit. One and the same. To run would require the pair to bolt past the intruders and hope the men did not have good aim or eyesight. Still the sounds of a man fumbling with a lighter refusing to spark echoed out into the darkness. Still shadows gave them reprieve. Petyr swallowed, hard; Sansa would be able to hear his throat working down, down, swallowing fear or anxiety into the pit of his stomach.
There was a reason that Petyr Baelish had been alone when Sansa had nearly stumbled into the steel teeth of one of his traps. A reason he did not travel in a coterie or a pack – even when logic dictated that there was safety in numbers, strength in numbers. It had not always been the case. At one point, Petyr had been part of a camp as most survivors had been. From the men and women of that camp Petyr had learned everything he knew of the world outside. Great metropolitan cities annihilated completely by fires no one could extinguish; roads choked with the dried husks of dead automobiles and within those rusted bones, the drier, paper husks of men and women huddled inside for warmth and protection. Animal life was scarce, becoming scarcer, and it became obvious that only the most avaricious and pestilent of insects would thrive in those uncertain times. Petyr among them. And such creatures, such selfish, insidious creatures were bound to turn on each other once it became clear that man outnumbered sustainable resources.
The sun died out or burned like fire. Springs were cold and lusterless, while the barren survivors of natural fauna etched out what existence it could beneath an orange-brown sun of perpetual dust clouds. In all but the highest elevation, the warmth of the sun was nearly unregistrable on human skin, until the summer, when it became unbearable. In most areas, at least the ones Petyr had witnessed, grass could only grow near the summer months, in the short window of opportunity between the end of winter’s chill and before the clay-oven heat of summer became oppressive and killed all but the stoutest vegetation. The pastoral life of a reconquered earth came of nothing: for nothing could live on such an earth anymore. The land became a stone of sun-baked mud. When the snows of unforgiving winters melted into the dead earth they left a certain unfortunate aftermath. Brown ichor, like the slime that collects under bridges and alongside ditched roads, permeated all the grounds of the earth as far as Petyr could see. When favorable winds rose, it brought the smells of decay, of bucolic ruination. The world beyond his sight simply did not exist: this, the winds told him. They traveled from afar over the vast, wide reaching plains, and left in their wake the odor of pus and plague, of newly-minted graves uncovered by the rising waters of sewers flooded, rat demesne, and finally, the chastening, charnel-house odor of unburied children.
Thus Petyr had trekked Northward. Until the baked crust of earth could sustain trees, even forests, though he had been far from the only one with such designs. Foliage and greenery came with new dangers, those far more clever than a boiling sun.
Such the likes that skulked through the church. Wheezing whispers and clicking fingertaps sounded from one pew or another. It was too dark to see from their puny vantage atop the preacher’s platform, and Petyr dared not to move, nor crane even a single inch lest he risk making any noise that would draw attention. In silence, his mind worked. The gun he’d kept shouldered was a few feet away, leaned against a wall. There were only two bullets, with a manual reload which would require fishing into his coat pocket for extra ammunition. A coat which had been slung over one of the wooden rows. Fool he was, to leave valuables of such import strewn casually amid the labyrinth of the church’s belly.
Petyr could escape. That much he was sure off. Misdirection and causing panic would be easy to do in the dark. The surrounding area was wooded and dense, and he would be able to navigate away easily enough. But what of the girl? The blood she had drawn began to wend its way slowly down one wrist, a tiny rivulet of angry crimson. What did he owe her? Nothing. To leave her behind would not even make the list of vile deeds he’d committed in the name of survival. Yet something had given him considerable pause. When first he’d heard the intruders, he’d not darted to safety, he’d not collected his valuables and fled, he’d crept up the stairs in an effort to preserve the red-headed accident, almost in a way that would be considered by many to be paternal.
Against him, Petyr could feel her body trembling. As delicate as a newborn fawn curled in the thicket, protected only by the nettles and thorns wrapped around her. Perhaps it was that helplessness which made it difficult to stomach the idea of abandoning her.
The lighter caught, finally, and a tiny orange glow emanated from further within the church. Two silhouetted figures loomed down the center aisle. Petyr stared, unblinking, unmoving, unbreathing. The men were speaking to each other in some broken backwoods lingo; the words were difficult to understand, but the casual joviality which with they grunted to each other showed how unconcerned they were with their surroundings. Entirely oblivious to the idea that they were not alone.
Slowly, Petyr’s hands and arms unfurled from around Sansa. “When I shoot, get out of here.” The instructions, while clear enough, were spoken very quietly, and only once, before on a surge of adrenaline prompted the man to rise to his feet, make fast work of the distance separating him and his firearm, and fire a shot towards the two figures. There was no telling whether either of them were hit. The lighter, as expected, instantly went out, extinguishing all light in the church. Chaos erupted. There was a tremendous fury of noise as treasures were knocked over, bodies diving to the floor in the realization of being under attack.
One entrance. One exit. One and the same.
Petyr had greeted her tidings of so little time upon the road with disdain, yet she withstood what dangers he saw fit to abandon. Behind those hallowed walls he seemed to sneer at, riots and disordered reigned. When faced with apocalypse, one did not wait placidly in line for a meager ration of bread and jerky. People turned on one another. It terrified her more than withered grass or silent springs, set her teeth to grinding more easily than sweltering days and frigid nights. Sansa spent a life believing not in the endurance of nature, but the unshakable goodness of the human soul. That stopped, when they started killing the children. Her parents shuttered the windows, told them it was mercy, however misplaced. But she saw, pulling aside the curtains with Robb one night, the titian glow transformed into a blaze, a bonfire flickering just down their street.
Sansa knew what they did with those bodies, why they were bodies at all, rather than remain soft, innocent, squirming bundles of life. After that, she and Robb saw to it that none of the young ones wandered for but a moment alone.
At least the comfort of home remained, that familiar bed room, long-memorized faces, routes to dispensaries taken along the same roads which once carried the family to school, to church, to doctors and dentists and sports practices. New nightmares in old locales: tattered rags hanging from the monkey bars, shallow graves on the soccer field, family pets transformed into vicious beasts of protection. She envied her younger siblings their lack of understanding, wanting to blot it all out until the terror was only vague and hovering, rather than the sharp slash of a knife with each new dawn.
Ned Stark was respected, the most recent in a long line of logging heirs who helped keep the region afloat in jobs and profits. When calamity first struck, his hand reached out; with companies rendered obsolete, the wealth had been redirected towards the survival of those nearby. But gratitude only extended so far. Loyalty could be bought and sold, history meant nothing in the light of a fresh meal or dry place to sleep. They did what survival required - they fled. Then it was the same hardships Petyr had known for however many years: starvation, dehydration, exposure, roving bands of fellow exiles who cared as little for the bounds of civilized society as those pretending otherwise behind high walls. And one by one they perished, leaving the weakest, most frightened and ill-equipped of their party to claw forward doggedly.
For how could it be Sansa who deserved to live, shaking wordlessly beneath a bench as Death crept nearer?
The light burned, topaz swallowing up darkened pupils for a moment until they were no more than pricks of black in a sea of blue. Slowly they adjusted, focusing on two hazy figures making their way up the same aisle she had carried their dinner - her dinner - a handful of hours before. Sansa wedged further back against Baelish, determined that not a single tarnished copper strand catch in the wavering flame. “What?” And go where? How would she find him again? Did he want her to find him a second time? The girl could not begrudge him any suspicion that it was her arrival which brought about their present company, intentional or no. Circumstances certainly painted her as a liability, rather than asset. Anyone could skin a rabbit, after all.
But Petyr’s instructions were only that, not an invitation to conversation or planning. Nothing but a rush of air warned that he had left her, blind panic keeping Sansa frozen in place. When the light extinguished, however, the same instinct that drove him towards the rifle - It was loaded! He could have killed me! - she scrambled out from her wooden shelter and rocketed towards the door. Halfway down the aisle, her foot caught on something soft and lumpy. Whether it was one of the visitors or Petyr, she knew not; with a terrified gasp Sansa fell to the floor, her tumble broken at the last moment by flailing hands. Whatever she had tripped over grunted. Kicking backwards, horrified at the thought of being caught, the girl forced herself upright a second time and hurtled forward. Palms burning, something wet and hot trickling from one eyebrow, Sansa wrenched the door open and burst into the cold night air.
She should keep running. That was the only sensible thing to do, put as much distance between her person and the strange, cluttered church as possible before dawn broke and the need for shelter made itself known. But there in the woods, heels sinking slightly in the rain-dampened soil, Sansa paused. He saved me. The altruism of the man’s actions was not lost on her, offering distraction or protection as she blindly fled. I have to stay, only until I know he’s okay. Then offers of walking east whilst he trod west, or hunkering down in those woods while Petyr began his journey anew could be made. But inside that church was a debt, as binding and profound as the one writ by an unsqueezed trigger. Shuffling to crouch behind a thorny bush, well hidden in the grey-brown undergrowth, Sansa resolved to wait until that imbalance could be rectified.
There was always terror in chaos; planned chaos, chaos of your own invention, the terror in that was lower, deeper, humming in your veins like the vibrations plucked from a stringed instrument. The chaos which erupted in the darkness prompted only fight or flight. In the darkness existed only cornered mongrels, teeth gnashing with bloodied, foaming gums, and horrible wails of panic rising like a banshee’s cries into the pitched roof of the church. In such darkness, such panic, it was difficult to think of anything beyond fleeing. Petyr grappled in the darkness, hands seeking items to throw, to hurl in any direction simply to provide misdirected noise, another phantom sound to battle in the shrouded shadows of night.
Sansa was lost to him. Out of his mind. Whether she made it safely out of the church or not was no longer of any concern to him. The rapidly firing synapses of his mind instead focused on matters of more immediate importance to him: he wanted his coat. Moreover, he wanted the valuable treasures hidden inside of its pockets.
The men’s shouting grew less panicked and more purposeful with every second, screaming demands to get low, until everything went silent with insidious plotting. A murderous silence. A festering silence.
Outside, it was less so. There was a stomping, a stampede of broken branches, of heavy breathing, of men coming, coming, coming. Towards the church, towards the sound of gunfire. Drawn like moths to a flame. Undoubtedly they were of the same group which had infiltrated the church as a pair. Inside they swarmed. From the small windows, beams of light shone outward into the night, bending as each ancient pane was hit, jerking one way or another. A flashlight, a battery-powered godsend. Mystical beams which might have shone down from the heavens, now unveiling every sickly creature of man crawling like animals upon the dusty church floor.
Near Sansa, where she crouched in the brush, a harrowing scream erupted from the nettles. The sound of metal links rattled. A man, caught in the same rusted teeth Petyr had steered Sansa away from mere hours earlier.
There was a hand, dark, warm, slick with black. Around Sansa’s palm fingers roughly curled. They led her away, away, far far away, twigs snapping underfoot, lungs working until they might burst. Until the refracted rays of light no longer bounced neon shadows through the warped and twisted woods, until the howling of a wounded man no longer pierced the night like a terrible omen.
Only then, only when all that remained around them was the heavy press of darkness, a faint glow of distant hazy white barely illuminating a desolate horizon, did the hand let her go. Ah! T’was the briefest respite! Before a wide tree crunched hard against Sansa’s back, Petyr leaning up against her with all of his weight, his hand curled at the base of her throat—
”Do you belong to them?“ It was barely rasped; Petyr was out of breath, exhausted from the run, and the result of it washed over her face. She could feel the heat of the sweat, she could smell it, coming off of his skin in hot, salty waves. "Did you lead them here?”
A sweet, tender little morsel like Sansa would be desired by anyone, anywhere. Petyr himself had sold a thousand fawns not half as ripe as she was. In her condition, any tracker worth their salt would have been able to follow her path. How foolish he had been. How he should have known better than to believe a single word out of her starving mouth.
“Did you?“ he repeated, he seethed, and he was pressed so closely she could feel the hammer of his heart beating against her own breast. To crush her windpipe would be a vengeful pleasure.
Around her the forest was alight with the sort of noise crickets and toads and mice might have raised before the earth turned to ash. Now it was men, clusters of hungry, desperate men crashing through the undergrowth towards Petyr’s crumbling sanctuary. Lower she crouched, flattening to her stomach amongst the leaves and bracken. Men were difficult to discern in the encompassing darkness, little more than shadowy pillars darting in, out, and about the structure. She knew a little of her host’s gait, though not with enough confidence to pick him out of the swarming mob. Burrowing deeper, Sansa attempted to satisfy herself with the flashes of yellowed light and stumbling forms, none of which looked to be her quarry, turning the little haven into a veritable beacon of activity.
A lighthouse, in the barren waste of a continental sea.
Until a piercing shriek, pain mixed with the horror imparted by a glimpse of Death, cut through to her marrow. Noise reverberated off every tree, caught and lingered in each thorny busy; it might have come from her right and behind, but Sansa could not be sure. She nestled further into the sparse shelter of her bush, so preoccupied with those hovering about the church’s door that an approach from behind went woefully undetected. Yet gradual enough was the touch, devoid of triumphant cry or lewd pull against a torso, that Sansa followed without further protest. Petyr, alive. In what condition, she knew not, though clearly he could run at a pace steady enough to carry them far from his holy shelter.
Blood. That had to be blood on his fingers, the girl realized as digits flexed, curved tighter to hold onto him as they crashed through the woods. Sansa hoped it wasn’t his, until remembering the bite given beneath a pew. Then she just hoped he would live. Breath came in sharper pants, harsh, rattling pulls of air that nearly drowned the crash of undergrowth beneath paired sprints. When at last he let her stop, taking only a moment to glance back into the endless, inky black behind them, Sansa doubled over with pained gasps. Hands on her knees, hair forming twin waterfalls of dingy red beside her face, form shook with a the briefest indulgence of relief before forced upright and against the unrelenting bite of a tree.
"Wha – what?” Sansa didn’t understand. Lead who? Just one day ago, she had hovered on the precipice of starvation, crawling alone to that tart oasis…Both hands scrabbled up; one clutched at his wrist, pulling down and away while the other tried to wedge its fingers between her throat and his own. A fruitless effort, as they slipped in the thin sheet of gore covering his hand. Lead who? Those men? In the low light, he might see the blue of her eyes lighten to an icy pale of recognition.
She wasn’t hurt. Only scared. If he believed not her first tale, what would a second denial mean?
“No! No!” Their faces remained formless, their numbers vague, their methods and goals a void of possibility. Sansa did not know them. Not a one. “No, Petyr, please!” Her feet stretched, toes bracing and pushing against the ground to gain her but an inch to breathe. Rather than shout, the girl’s voice lowered to a furtive whisper; small proofs of her innocence, that she didn’t want those men to find them, that she hadn’t lured them to the church, that she wanted him to believe her rather than view her a traitor. “Petyr, please! If – If I’d been with them, why…why hide?” Sansa took air where she could, gasped between words and syllables as she fought to plead her case. “I did what you said. I waited for you. I could’ve made them find you. You were gone for hours this afternoon, if I was with them you could’ve been ambushed then!”
Two thin trails of tears broke free from her lashes, though this time Sansa di not sob. “If I was with them, why would I ask you to kill me?” Why indeed.
Petyr didn’t think she was in cahoots with those men. Acting in collusion with them was entirely unlikely, especially given just how much time had passed between her arrival and theirs. A more reasonable scenario would be that she had escaped. Run from them. Lead them, unintentionally, with snapped twigs and rusted footprints. No girl who looked the way she did went alone for long. Not with hair of such red, skin unblemished by scar or wound – the girl still had breasts, hunger and malnourishment having not sucked them away into complete androgyny. Simply because she might have run from them did not make inadvertently guiding them any less of an offense. Their eyes did not break. Petyr considered what she said. Considered everything. Those hours the prior afternoon had not been spent in their entirely tracking down her dinner. Several wide perimeter sweeps had been made in search of any obvious signs the girl might have left behind – intentionally or otherwise. He had found none.
None of it mattered. If she had done it on purpose or not. The church no longer belonged to him. However many men had descended upon it were of too great a number to dare try and wage war with. And so Petyr’s fingers loosened about her throat. A moment later, he stepped away. The back of his hand wiped a thin, sweaty layer of grime from his forehead. Towards the distance he stared, the heavy rise and fall of his chest slowing with each moment his breath had the opportunity to catch. The rifle, slung diagonally across his back, seemed to stretch towards the gloomy overhang of sky like a thin black skeleton arm, bony finger reaching, reaching, for blessed reprieve and absolution.
A rasp caught in Petyr’s throat, followed by a sharp hack, and a thick glob of saliva was spit to the carpet of withered leaves. They crunched beneath his feet as he began to walk away. Not the soggy, damp, muted crunch of leaves affected by months of hoarfrost or thick fog. It was sharp, crisp, like the husks of insect shells; beetles, cockroaches, grasshoppers, dried in the sun for days on end in search of moisture and long denied. Too loud, too loud. The ripple of a gunshot would have been more subtle, the desperate howl of manacled frustration bubbling ever-nearer to eruption surely would have been quieter. Underfoot, those leaves seemed like a cacophonous peal, a terrible, stentorian display of recklessness. It was a mistake. How could anyone possibly make such a mistake?
It was silence as sudden as the onslaught. Petyr walked away, into the density of the wood, leaving Sansa behind. As unceremoniously as he had found her, with twice as much resolve. If he meant for her to follow, he gave no indication, yet neither still did he give parting sentiments, or words of wisdom and advice.
The world, in her hands, for her to claim or forsake.
One skin of water and a scrawny rabbit amounted to quite a lot when it came to the matter of a drive to live. Able to step aside, above it all, one could identify Petyr as a provider and protector, clearly skilled in survival, possessed of a compassion sufficient to at least guarantee she would meet no great harm at his hands. Except grimy fingers pinned Sansa to the moment, one in which her back abraded against stubborn oak, a fallow dusting of bark coating the only clothes belonging to her. Lightheadedness, euphoria, crept over the girl until it seemed not so terrible a thing, letting herself be strangled. Pricks of color long since vanished from the natural world erupted before her eyes - had she closed them? Last Sansa could remember, Petyr stared. Nebulae formed and dispersed, entire galaxies born and perished behind the shield of fleshy opercula, and then ———
Air.
With a rattling pull of blessed oxygen, Sansa grated a few inches down the tree as deathly support vanished. Her chest still burned from their escape, inflammation creeping up a clenched windpipe to tingle along a dry palate. No spit remained in her mouth to hack up and expel; even the sweat on her brow was a lighter dappling than his, despite having run just as fast, just as hard. What vanished from a body in days could take weeks to replace properly, be it water or nutrients or, most of all, strength. Petyr’s kind treatments comforted a weary soul, but did not heal it.
“I’m sorry,” she commiserated, though the girl had naught consciously to do with the loss of his home. Already he had turned away, arid brush sounding off like forgotten landmines beneath his feet. Instinctively Sansa shrank back against the tree, fearing approach, fearing discovery, fearing death. When only moments before the hallucinatory sanctuary of unconsciousness beckoned. A great distance still separated the brigands from the displaced, though she had no notion how much. Enough for the shocking report of twigs to be lost within the thicket of grey trees about them? Or was he indulging a sort of suicidal whim, daring the approach of any antagonist now that he had been forced into the open? Petyr left her as he had found her, alone, crouched above the dirt, awaiting the dictates of her fate to be handed out by another. Not once did emerald glint out over a shoulder, nor did fingers move in a pale flash beside one hip.
Sansa sat. When last her momentary host offered shelter, she had taken his dinner, his bed, then cost him all worldly possessions save a coat and an empty rifle. It had to be, after those shots which set her ears to ringing, a high-pitched whine of tympanic protest over the baser, more common sounds of invasion. And if one or two projectiles still lingered, the girl doubted more than ever that she would warrant their expulsion. She could go back. The other men hadn’t seen her, might take pity as the stranger tramping further into the woods had, preserving her access to water, to shelter, to food. Sansa knew the foolishness behind such hope, felt the creeping shame at ever having thought it. Fortune would grant her a quick death, though they were just as likely to keep her, find their amusement with her, before killing her all the same. She could stay, right there against the tree. How arduous life was, and how cathartic it would be, to abandon that pursuit. Drift off, as was the temptation in her makeshift shelter of a few nights ago. She could follow, in spite of no invitation granting permission. Did permission exist any longer? Petyr proved it took very little damn her, even less than had been given in her salvation. One squeeze…
Scrambling up, as thoughtless to the noise as he, Sansa began to jog after him. Starving, dehydrated, and alone, still the girl romanticized death. Nothing happened: no relief, no reunion, no reward for good behavior. Just blackness, isolation even from your sense of self. She wasn’t ready for that, wasn’t ready to give up even her memories of better days. No cry alerted the man to his pursuit, dried foliage serving well enough. When she came within five yards of him, Sansa slowed, matching her stride and pace to Petyr’s. A shadow, with hair of flaming red, trailing after him in the night.
Whatever happened, at least she would not remain alone.
