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— » 003 » 005 QUARTERS | THIRD LEVEL SEAMSTRESS | FIFTH LEVEL PETYR'S LIBARY | FIFTH LEVEL DEVICE, IN-PERSON, BY RAVEN

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[ There is little pleasure to be taken from tokens given unwillingly — in this sort of instance, at least — but there is no use in being ungrateful and Petyr had learned long ago to glean pleasure where he could. Under the paper-thin guise of duty, he had gently pulled this and that from her hands, in exchanges not nearly as polished or refined as those through which he had engineered her place by his side. (And the lie is bare-faced, indeed; each time, the name upon his lips is Sansa, Sansa, not that of his daughter. A bird in a gilded cage, loved — if it could be called that — in all the wrong ways, kept there by a song.)

He leans in, then, head crooking to one side as he keeps watching her, his eyes bright. ] The game was never played through to completion, [ he notes, although not as any sort of reprimand. It's a simple statement of the fact — the plans that he had set for the immediate future, at least, had not spooled out. She had not yet married Harrold, nor had she yet reclaimed the identity of Sansa Stark. (Part of him now doubts that she ever will, in as far as he recognizes the difference.)

Though close enough that he can see the different colors that make up her eyes, he doesn't yet close the gap. Instead, he simply hovers there, as if in expectation, watching her, filing away the slightest movement and wondering exactly what it is that goes through her mind. Her hand stills and her breath hangs in the air and he watches her, his fingers still there upon the line of her jaw. (And yes, yes, it is a horrible thing to wield such power over anyone at all.) ]

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[ Alayne knows that she should speak, and in response to her father's words a thousand answers — from the very modest to the very clever to the petty and cruel — bloom and then die upon her tongue. The only sound that escapes her lips is air: a slow release, the emptying of lungs; but one that brings no satisfaction nor release, for the look in Petyr's eyes does not waver. (No, instead it grows stronger, like a tide that comes in with the creeping of waves — strong, stronger, then stronger still — until all the boats that were once moored upon dry land finally find themselves submerged and pulling at their tethers.)

Hers is a breath that trembles garishly against the new nearness of Petyr's face. Like the weeping leaves of a tree that is pelted by rain, Alayne shivers and her stomach rebels but what she feels crawling beneath her skin is not fear, it's expectation. No one, not a soul in the Seven Kingdoms, has seen Petyr Baelish in this light; and none have known Littlefinger and the ambition of his plans so plainly as she has. So only Alayne can look now at the man who searches her with the grey-greens of his eyes and understand the breadth of his immediate desire. (Move or be moved, but Alayne is made powerless by Petyr's closeness, by the smell of mint and jungle and wildblossom.)

His gaze tells her: What is not given will be afforded in any case. And I'd rather not take from you, sweetling. In truth, Alayne would rather he not take from her either, but her means are meager and her father is waiting. (Everyone wants to be loved. The reminder is quick and cruel in its simplicity. Even Petyr.)

When she kisses him finally it is in the most daughterly manner — chaste and close-mouthed and brief — just shy of his lips, nearing the corner. Her eyes beg a silent: be satisfied. ]

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[ And herein, the problem: Petyr Baelish has never been satisfied, and never will be. So when she kisses him, quick and chaste, his brow creases, and the line of his mouth thins, and then he moves to claim his prize. The question is never if she will or she will not yield (she has to, says the debt unpaid, says the sway that he knows he holds over her heart and her head), but how; if the tree will fall on its own or be cut down.

No, no a soul in the Seven Kingdoms has seen Petyr this open or this ugly, save her, and no one else ever will. Where he hides one lie, he opens up another for her inspection, and allows her to grasp for whatever justification she needs. It is a luxury he affords no one else, for no one else is so completely a product of his own two hands as she is, and if he is ever brought down, it will be by his own blade, not that of another.

When he kisses her, the gesture is not chaste nor brief, not fatherly in the least. There is no one to see them, no one to judge or to suspect them, only the plants and insects that make up the garden, and there is no one to know the worst of their secrets save each other. ]

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[ He kisses her for a long time.

So long, in fact, that Alayne's hands go from loose at her sides to tiny, balled-up fists to lifted in the space that barely exists between them, hovering just shy of Petyr's chest. Palms flat, fingers splayed, arms trembling; another silent bid of reap quickly, reap mercifully, and be satisfied. But despite the urgency that thrums through her forearms, the impulse that tells her to fly (to fight), Alayne does not push, does not pry the mercy from him. All things — even dye, even a song — have their costs. Her agency is no exception, nor is the illusion that she is loved.

Perhaps, Alayne tries to reason, this is the price of salvation. One more figure added to an already hefty sum. How many had died so that I could live? Chief amongst them had been that red-haired girl from Winterfell, that foolish little bird Sansa Stark. Petyr risked his lfe to salvage me from King's Landing. He promised to return Sansa's bones to the lands that birthed her. Is this not worth such a reward?

It is a reasoning that does not spring from the soil of Alayne's mind; instead, it has been placed there by Littlefinger and his smile in the dark. He had said as much on their last night in the Vale — a night which had been frosted with ice and deepened with snow, a night on which he had used both hands to draw Alayne into his lap and tell her the tale of Sansa's re-inheritance. (As for Alayne's on thoughts on the matter, she has none. Simply a blankness inside herself, a well of blindness that she fills with excuses and Littlefinger's songs. Some truths are too terrible to twist to a perfect light, just as some justifications lie too far beyond one's reach.)

She does not shut her eyes. No, they remain open but unwide, their lids drooped and fluttering, revealing more than a sliver's worth of Riverrun blue. (An accusation, perhaps; a plea of some kind.) When finally he releases her, Alayne is breathless and flushed and there is a horrible feeling insider herself, gathered in a tight knot just below her navel.

This is the true cost. Alayne knows. It is the weight of my shame. ]

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[seem]

[ For everything, there is a cost, a price. For loving too much and too fiercely and too far above his station, Petyr paid the price in blood. For that blood spilt, all of Westeros has paid, one way or another, and this is the way in which he chooses to extract it from Sansa. And yes, perhaps it's his fault that that reasoning exists in her head, but it exists, and that is that. (And yes, he would prefer that she return his affections — if they can be called as such — unbidden, that her hands would rest instead of hover, but at the end of the day, the truth is that he doesn't much care. Maybe that's part of the price he'd paid, so long ago, to lose sight of those parts of the means so long as the end was achieved.)

When he lets her go, he still does not back too far away, brushing her hair back from her face with one hand. Less and less often does he couch these actions in flowered words. They do nothing, after all, to lighten the weight. He can still taste something akin to hesitation upon her tongue. But he smiles, now, the line of his lips harsher than it usually is, and if that is a manifestation of Littlefinger's place within him or a trick of the light, who is to say? ]

We will make the best of what we are given, [ he tells her, and whether that is a comment on the moments just past or their former conversation, he leaves to her to puzzle out. As he speaks, he takes her hands in his, pressing that bud back into her palm before letting go, fingers slipping away like the waning of the tide. ]

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[ Now, relief finds her as Petyr's (or is it Littlefinger's) shadow slips from her face, her face whose cheeks are still warm and speckled pink with both her own embarrassment and his nearness. The flower is but a whisper of weight in the hollow of her hand but Alayne feels every bit of it threatening to pull her down down into the depths of her shame. Still, despite this sentiment she keeps his gaze; it is the only bravery she knows against Petyr — not to flinch when she is so encumbered, not to cower the way Sansa had with so many of the others. This is the contradiction that lies within her, Alayne's greatest weakness and her saving grace. Her ability to long and to surivive, even in the face of such suffering — to know how to bend and how to yield to such great iniquities, but not to break.

Her fingers close around the bud regiven, forming a pale-barred cage around the bloom, protecting it. She and it are not so different, Alayne thinks: two flowers plucked before their time, removed from the roots that had given them birth, harvested for their beauty. But would Petyr relinquish her as easily as he had given up the blossom which she now carried? No. Alayne is convinced of it. I am dear to him, surely. Why else would he hide me with such care, risking life and limb to whisk me away from the Lannisters' grasp?

At length, she nods, grasping the flower to her breast as if it were a precious gift. ] Yes, father, [ she says, ever dutiful, though her mouth is moist and her eyes are wet. ] We will.