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Petyr wakes to a pale dawn. Grey and white, stark colours, Stark colours. How fitting. He stares at the ceiling and wonders whether he is lying on Ned Stark’s half of the bed, or Cat’s. He hopes Rickard Stark slept in this bed. That would be nothing short of delicious, if up-jumped little Petyr Baelish slept in the Lord of Winterfell’s bed but Brandon Stark never did, for all his skill with his precious sword and his shining future. The more ancient and hallowed this usurped bed is, the better Petyr will sleep in it. The thought of pleasuring Ned Stark’s daughter, Brandon Stark’s niece, in the bed of their forefathers is arousing by itself. My dear Lord Stark, you mistake me. She pursued me, she chose me for her pleasures. Did I not promise to serve the Starks? I followed where she led me. Isn’t that what a lesser lord should do? Follow his betters? Wasn’t obeying the will of a Stark the very lesson you meant me to learn? How well have I learned it!
Sansa fell asleep immediately after they broke apart, and Petyr was not surprised. He was certain she stayed awake the night before the battle, and it was not as if the Wall was known for its comfortable guest rooms. Petyr left her to sleep. There would be time for pleasure later, and he needed to slip back to his rooms, and quickly. The longer he stayed, the more servants would be up and about, and the greater the risk that he would be spotted in the vicinity of Lady Sansa’s chambers, unkempt and at a suspicious hour. Part of him would like nothing better than to be caught in the act by Yohn Royce, to see the look of pure shock and disgust on that flabby face, the realisation that Petyr’s black tongue has been licking more than Sansa’s boots. But furthering his plans is his greatest pleasure, so while he puts his clothes back on Petyr racks his brain to remember the most discreet path from here to his rooms. It need not be the fastest route, or even the most private, so long as it avoided the path of any insomniac noblemen. The gossip of servants could be belittled, but the Vale and the North could not know the extent of his intimacy with Sansa until his position in Winterfell was secure.
Once his bedroom door is behind him, Petyr performs his morning routine and ponders his next move. It is too soon for marriage, so he can’t risk getting Sansa with child, but he has no intention of halting such lusts completely. Petyr’s knowledge of female anatomy is greater than even Maester Pycelle’s, because of his brothelkeeping days. He knows moon tea is an abortifacient, not a contraceptive, and Lysa is a dire warning of what can go wrong. He reminds himself to explain to Sansa a method from the Summer Isles Chataya taught him, of how a woman can use a smooth stone to track the progress of her moon blood. (He suspects that Cersei may have learned it herself.)
Sansa is absent at breakfast, which confuses the Vale Lords until Petyr makes the offhand comment that Lady Sansa told him yesterday that she was weary and faint of late, drained by matters of war, and needed much rest. Not slow to believe in feminine delicacy, the Vale Lords send their good wishes to her chambers, suspicions appeased.
Petyr spends the morning at the accounts Maester Wolkan delivers to him at Sansa’s behest. Sansa’s never had a head for figures, whereas Petyr can juggle large numbers like Moon Boy juggled blood oranges. Ramsay left the administration of the North in chaos, so Petyr smiles to himself at the irony that the master of chaos is required to undo the damage – and that it’s in his own best interest to do so, if Jon Snow’s bedtime stories are to be taken seriously. Once he has time to let his mind stray off the beaten track, Petyr’s thoughts return to Sansa, and what she might want from him next. He’s sure that Ramsay must have tied her up, which means it’ll take her a long time to warm up to his newest idea: her wrists tied to the bedpost as she sits on his face, tugging on her restraints, his hands around her thighs holding her still, trapping her so all she can do is tip back her head and moan. It’s not his favourite fantasy- that honour goes to bunching Sansa’s velvet skirts around her waist and thrusting deeply, her hair tickling his chest, her moans echoing through the crypts as she maintains her balance by holding on to her father’s statue.
In the afternoon lull, Petyr finds Sansa at the godswood, the one place his fantasies cannot happily defile. (Perhaps it is those strange red eyes, the sensation of being watched… it made the thought of leaning against a weirwood as Sansa hungrily sucked him an uncomfortable one).
“I have come to comfort the widow,” he announces his arrival. Sansa gives a smirk that softens into affection. Petyr is the only one in Winterfell who knows what it means to kill your spouse. Framing Lysa’s death as an accident inspired Sansa to blame Ramsay’s obviously mauled corpse on the kennelmaster. An easy mistake: he forgot to check that the kennels were locked and thought nothing of it because the Starks forgot to tell him Ramsay’s hounds were disloyal from starvation. It was just one of life’s sudden disasters, and an insignificant one at that- what’s the point of punishing the kennelmaster when they were going to hang Ramsay anyway? The lords loathed Ramsay, yet killing is always messy, and never a lady’s domain (except for Mormont women, but they’re half-bear anyway). Sansa must be the lady the two cultures want to see, the lady who reassures them of the security of their ways of life. The forms must be observed, and who is better at observing forms than Sansa?
“I am comforted, my lord. So many widows lose their husbands so suddenly, I am grateful mine did not die so unexpectedly. I had time to prepare.”
The two look at each other for a moment longer, then Sansa shifts to make room for Petyr to perch.
“It has been a long journey,” Petyr remarks, and Sansa knows he is not just talking of the road from Moat Cailin to Winterfell.
“I’m not a little bird anymore.” Her tone is bleak, empty of sadness or relief.
“You are. You’re a little bird, just like me.”
Sansa lets more minutes pass in silence, her hand idly stroking his own, before she tells him: “come back to my chambers tonight.” She ignores his proud smirk and humble obedience.
She knows Jon would rather she spent her evening with him, like that first night at the Wall. She can’t bring herself to face Jon yet. She’s supposed to be his gentle sister, the one he must protect. Gentle sisters don’t feed men to starving dogs. Jon gifted her Ramsay’s life, aye, but… the relish with which she watched him suffer might make Jon view her differently, as less honourable. Jon feels regret for the killing he has done, burdened by tragic necessity, by justice. Sansa doesn’t think he’d understand what vengeance really feels like.
“It’s not what Father would have done,” she confesses to Petyr. “Father would have taken his head, or hanged him. He would have sentenced him publicly, without showing his feelings. I didn’t think about Ramsay’s victims when I killed him, except Rickon, a little. I only thought about me, and what he did to me. I killed him for myself.”
“I doubt whether Ramsay’s victims have any complaints about what you did. Would they have wanted Ramsay to die without pain and fear and bloodshed? Would they have wanted the Stark way, or yours?”
“I don’t know how to tell Jon…”
“Jon is an honourable man, only at home among swords and brothers-in-arms. Such men are born soldiers. Myself, I’ve always preferred the conversation of women. So much more.. intriguing.”
It takes Sansa no time at all to read the subtext of his words. A soldier is not a leader. A soldier takes orders, a leader gives them.
Maester Wolkan interrupts them, but by then Petyr has risen, standing deferentially at Sansa’s side to play the part of the honest adviser who knows his place, and waits without interrupting his lady’s prayers. Sansa goes indoors with Maester Wolkan, thinking on her daily sewing. Ramsay had a fine fur cloak, but Sansa never wants to see it again. She gave Ramsay’s wardrobe to the seamstresses of Winterfell to be unpicked and cut up and remade to garb common soldiers and servants. His knives have been melted down and reforged.
Nothing like a thoughtful gift to make a new friendship grow strong. Sansa sent a huntsman to the wolfswood, and now he returns after many hours with the fur she wants: black, flecked with silver. It is a dense fur, soft to her touch, with not a single fine hair lost from wear.
She made Jon’s cloak like her father’s, to mould him into her protective knight in shining armour. Noble. Dependable. Petyr is nothing like her father, he would look ridiculous if he donned that plumage. Now she makes a cloak for Petyr, she sews it to the pattern of her own cloak, to the pattern of her mother’s cloak. Sansa thinks back to the Vale, how she modelled her black furs after his. Now it is her he must mirror, if he wants to avoid the social isolation of being a stranger- too Valeman for the North, too Braavosi for the Valemen. While Jon drills in the yard and Petyr reads his correspondence, Sansa sews, pondering her next steps with each stitch. There’s no need for her to summon Petyr and measure him. She’s been taking the measure of him for years. She thinks on how much it will please her to present him with this gift, this reward for his services, to sweep it around his shoulders.
She even leaves a little space at the collar for him to pin his mockingbird.