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QUARTERS | THIRD LEVEL
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PETYR'S LIBARY | FIFTH LEVEL
DEVICE, IN-PERSON, BY RAVEN

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[ It's late (or so Petyr assumes — the passage of time is hard to measure without the rise and fall of the sun) when they make their way to the oxygen gardens. The ship is still an alien thing to him (sterile, too clean, too enclosed), but there's something near comforting in the gardens, despite the blue light that pervades each level. It's a blue he's never been familiar with. Not the blue of the sky over the Trident nor the blue of any jewel he has ever seen.

So he seeks out the blue of the eyes of his daughter, his gaze inevitably finding her again no matter how fascinating his surroundings might prove. (Admittedly, it isn't necessarily so much a need to find some grounding anchor as it is to make sure that she is by his side, that she is still his. It's something that paints itself as simple concern, the concern of a father looking after his daughter, making sure that she stays safe in an environment that has yet to prove itself strictly friendly. They make quite the picture. They always do.) ]

[ She has been to the oxygen garden a few times already. Once with Bran and the Pie Maker whose name is Ned, and once with simply Bran himself, though the latter proved much more of a struggle with only Alayne to help Bran's chair along. With only Petyr to accompany her now, she is given much more reign over where she can go and how eagerly she can make her way. And so armed with that newfound freedom (as well as the boldness provided by her father's nearness), Alayne ventures more readily into the farther reaches of the cultivated wilds, straying from the neatly arranged plots of land separated by metal walkways and paths. In the further reaches, the land has been left to grow wild, the plants have been allowed to grow tall and unkempt, the crowns of which brush the illuminated ceilings above (blue, but not the color of sky, the color of space — metallic and cold).

There are no animals here save the various insects that buzz and chatter and alight on the fabric of Alayne's dress, but Alayne does not know that and so remains weary of every soft rustle of leaves and every pitch and sway of boughs in the distance. Here, the air is rich with moisture and is heady with the smell of exotic blossoms and heavy-hung fruit. To Alayne it is an amazement, unlike anything she has seen before or heard of songs or stories. Even though the dampness of the air makes her dress cumbersome, she does not complain, her spirits bouyed on by her enthusiasm and the opportunity to walk a while by her father's side.

(There is a rift in her heart, a hair-line crack so finely wrought that is impossible to discern by sight alone. One one side of the divide stands Petyr and his mockingbird, on the other sits Bran and the promise of wolves.)

A hand touches Petyr on the elbow as Alayne pauses beside him, distracted by the clusters of red-faced flowers which seem to bloom from the knots of a nearby tree. It makes Alayne smile brightly to herself, bending at the waist to look upon them closer. ] Sometimes I think myself dreaming, father, [ she says to one of the flowers. ] Have you ever before seen such a place?

[ At that touch, Petyr turns, eyes darting from the brown of her hair (once red, and threatening to be red once again) to the red of the flowers she inspects. He pauses, too, there by her side, shoulders angled toward her. He cannot deny taking some pleasure in this time, as the little lordling's presence on board the ship and his condition means that they are rarely out of his company. (He knows, he suspects, what lies in the boy's heart. Whether that takes certain root in the heart of his daughter — whether that rift will grow or sew itself shut — has yet to be seen. He knows better than most the kind of damage even a hair's breadth can do.)

Absently, one of his hands comes to rest upon the round of her shoulder as he leans in to inspect the flowers as well. (They are beautiful, yes, but lose something — in his eyes, at least — in the absence of sunlight. Perhaps it's hypocritical of him to think that way, but it makes no difference, in the end, what he thinks of the flora kept here.) ]

I cannot say that I have, sweetling, [ he answers, straightening up and allowing his gaze to wander to her as opposed to the knots of the tree. ] I, too, would think it a dream were the evidence to the contrary not so indisputable. But, at least, I have your company to bring me some comfort.

[ She feels the weight of Petyr's hand upon her shoulder, the pressure of it so slight as to be insignificant were it from someone else. But her father is a deliberate man — even in his carelessness he is deliberate, he's gone so far as to admit as much — and so Alayne turns her head to look at him, her eyes curious but silent in their questions. Her smile beats brighter for the slightest instance and it is clear that she is glad to have his company; Alayne had grown (in turns) both weak and resilient in her time alone upon the ship, but with her Sansa had become bold as well, making her voice heard from time to time in Bran's most secret counsel. ] I once heard whispers of a trader who had traveled south, all the way to Sothoryos. Only to be beat back by the sea and the poison of homesickness. [ Alayne says this with a childish enthusiasm though she knows that most stories, like most men, were false. What is true is less important than what other men believe is true. She glances down at the hand on her shoulder and then back to the flora once again. ] They've wilds such as these, don't they, father.

[ Silence then as she reaches to touch the petaled face of one of the blooms. Unlike most flowers Alayne knew of it, it did not feel soft beneath her fingers but hard like the wings of a beetle — waxy and sharp. She wonders if these flowers bloomed much the same way in the wild, or if the lack of sun forced them to be different — smaller, ruddier, more modest in face. It would not be so strange a thing and perhaps even wise (if flowers could be considered such a thing in the first place). Better to change oneself, better to grow hard or small or hardy, than to cease completely when forced into a false cage. And that was what the ship was, wasn't it? A cage without bars, without clear captive.

The thought worries Sansa as she pinches one of the hardened blossoms by the base and then plucks it free, offering it now to Petyr to examine better or do what he will. The implication is clear from the look in her eyes: I have been given over to comfort as well, father. ]

It would be no surprise to me if they did.

[ Yes, he is nothing if not deliberate. In that touch: stay by my side. Be bold, and remember — anyone who isn't us is our enemy. And perhaps it is true that the secret of Alayne Stone has never taken as well in his heart as it has in hers — it was Sansa he had kissed, out in the snow, and Sansa to whom he had brokered the engagement to Harry the Heir — but here, where names mean nothing and there is nothing to be won by them, the identity of Alayne is to his advantage. Here, the Stark name is not tarnished. She is no longer a hunted girl. There is nothing, in the strictest of terms, to bind her to him. But as long as she takes his name, she is his.

To that end, there is a little of both of the men that she has come to know — both Petyr and Littlefinger — in the way that he looks at her. He knows the way of placing himself in her heart is to open his, but in having to have that motivation in order to do so taints the action already.

Gently, he takes the blossom from her with a nod of thanks, balancing it in the palm of one hand as he inspects the petals with the other. ]

Sothoryos would be the place for anything so exotic, I suppose; I recall no flower so strange in Westeros.

[ In that touch: stay by my side and the reminder strikes upon Alayne's heart like an unyielding mallet upon the inside of a tower bell. The note intones in her is conviction, laced with incredulity for: is there any doubt that she would remain anywhere else? It had been Littlefinger who had absconded with her from the lion's den and Petyr who then enshrouded her with his name and hid her from the Lannisters' hounds. He had given her the only weapons afforded to her since birth — having been born with armor enough in courtesy but no means with which to return a blow, no matter how well forded with grace. No, no, there was no question. She would no leave him, not now. With Bran here, she needed him more than ever. Both Petyr and Littlefinger (oh what a terrible pact). ]

Why us, father? [ Alayne then asks at length, her lids lowered and her lashes reticent as she follows the sheen curve of one of the petals with a fingertip, her head bowed before him. ] Why have we been chosen?

[ When she lifts her eyes again, they are not wet but hold some similar sentiment — a sadness and suffering, one that is foreign and ill-fit to Alayne Stone's features (though perhaps an eco of the once lamentable Sansa Stark and all of her hidden shame). Surely if anyone knew, it would be him, he would divine what she could not and — in doing so — would forge them a path to both safety and home. ] Are we being punished? For our sins?

[ Perhaps it's those echoes that keep the lie from taking the lie from holding full sway, the echoes of the girl with red hair, the hair of her mother. But no, no, if he stopped to give it thought, he would know better. The reason that he still calls her Sansa, still can't distinguish the two souls that take root in her body as clearly as she can is because he cannot admit to being able to make the distinction in himself. Petyr Baelish and Littlefinger, two roots to one tree that have grown so far apart as to be completely separate and yet one and the same. She thinks them separate — she can see when one reigns and the other does not — but the truth is this: the line is blurry. Blurry enough, perhaps, to be irretrievable. To an extent, he has fallen upon his own blade.

It is Sansa that he sees now, when he raises his free hand to cup her cheek, his eyes searching her face. ]

No, [ he murmurs, his thumb brushing over the crest of her cheekbone. (As it stands, he knows less of their circumstances than she does, but it is his place, now, to know, or at least to pretend to.) ] This is no punishment. A test, perhaps. Regardless, we will make the best of the circumstances, will we not? [ He tips her chin up, then, holding her gaze. (I will keep us safe, I will get us home.) ]

Have we not proven our mettle already? Was not the game enough?

[ Whenever Petyr takes a hold of her face as he does now, Alayne knows that she should be mindful — that she should pay attention and be dutiful, that her focus should belong to no one but him. It is no difficult task; back in Westeros, ensconced within the impenetrable Eyrie, there were few companions for Lord Baelish's natural born daughter, no friends with which to pass the time save Gretchel — who hardly managed to be company at all — and the ever-needy Sweetrobin — who seemed more a labor than a friend with all of his constant tugging at Alayne.

No, in that time she had learned (again per her father's instruction) that there was no one among Lady Lysa's house whom she could trust, no other person save Petyr himself to which she could give herself to in both allegiance and love. It is a terrible sort of starvation to wield against one's supposed flesh and blood but where Alayne has grown blind to the lie, Petyr saw it bare-faced, being both the hand that draws the curtain closed upon the truth and the curtain itself. And in seeing it, he wielded it against Alayne, wheedling many an unfatherly token from her.

The pad of Petyr's thumb is but a whisper and so Alayne's voice quiets, her hand stills, its fingers still dipped lightly into the bowl of her father's hand, fingertips pausing in their absent study of the blossom and its foreign shape. Even her breath holds itself within her lungs, her lips parted in expectation of an exhale that does not come. ]

[ 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.) ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

Edited 2012-04-13 18:48 (UTC)

[ 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. ]

[ 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.

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