[ Oh, but she does worry. Between the throes of her own nightmares both real and imagined, both remembered and forgotten (both Sansa and Alayne), there is another fear even deeper felt. The fear of unworthiness, of trespasses that can never be repaid — no never, not through truth or lies or the greatest of efforts. (A sister who forsook her own name to survive, a daughter who is not daughter at all and yet is as loyal as one, loyal to a man who has proven faithful to none. A little bird who died.)
For all that she has suffered through death, she imagines that Sansa's brothers and Alayne's father have somehow suffered more. (She knows what it is to live when those you love do not. And perhaps it does not rend to ruin the way a tear to the stomach or the slice of a sword might, but it is an agony that lingers and then festers. It is a pain that does not die.) She wonders as she looks at Petyr now if he regrets whatever pang of emotion he'd felt upon her passing (there is no doubt, he must have felt something, hadn't he); something moves across the features of his face as she watches, like the brief shade of a cloud that momentarily blots out the sun, and Alayne knows (oh gods, she knows) that the love she had offered in her last moments had not made him strong. It had made him weak.
(Love is the poison, the queen had taught her. Why had she not lied in this, just as she'd lied about all the rest?)
The corners of her mouth turn downward in realization and she glares at the hand offered, pulling back again, her slender arm disappearing as she cocoons herself once again in sheets and blankets and robes.
(No, don't touch me. Don't look at me. Don't.) ]
It was better left—
[ Alayne shakes her head and then falls silent again. ]
( ACTION )
For all that she has suffered through death, she imagines that Sansa's brothers and Alayne's father have somehow suffered more. (She knows what it is to live when those you love do not. And perhaps it does not rend to ruin the way a tear to the stomach or the slice of a sword might, but it is an agony that lingers and then festers. It is a pain that does not die.) She wonders as she looks at Petyr now if he regrets whatever pang of emotion he'd felt upon her passing (there is no doubt, he must have felt something, hadn't he); something moves across the features of his face as she watches, like the brief shade of a cloud that momentarily blots out the sun, and Alayne knows (oh gods, she knows) that the love she had offered in her last moments had not made him strong. It had made him weak.
(Love is the poison, the queen had taught her. Why had she not lied in this, just as she'd lied about all the rest?)
The corners of her mouth turn downward in realization and she glares at the hand offered, pulling back again, her slender arm disappearing as she cocoons herself once again in sheets and blankets and robes.
(No, don't touch me. Don't look at me. Don't.) ]
It was better left—
[ Alayne shakes her head and then falls silent again. ]