aviary | CLOSED | prompt eight

[ Soon enough, he will deliver her the Lannisters on a plate. Not just the Lannisters, but the Kingdoms themselves, for nowhere does he lack strings to pull and nowhere does he not wield influence. His web is one built through years upon years of scheming and the practical application of blood and gold, and it is only a matter of time before it all comes to fruition.

But, for now, he simply offers her a smile as he reaches up to undo the pin at his collar, hands then traveling down bit by bit to undo the stays to his robes as he takes step after step towards the bed. (There's nothing truly sentimental about this act, so he doesn't bother with the pretense.) ]

You are much too gracious.

[ One pretense, then. (He can't quite help himself.) ]

[ His anger is like wood upon a fire, that bright curiosity in the Strangler's eyes becoming sharp and present beneath the milky film of her irises. Somewhere inside, Sara Connington cries stop, stop but that voice is swallowed and fed back to the Sprawl and from her desperation new life grows. ]

OUR UGLINESS IS MADE IN YOUR OWN LIKENESS. WE WERE SILENT AND STILL ONCE. BUT YOU BURNED US FIRST.

[ She leans forward and nods her head like a puppet pantomiming the gesture with the tug of a string. ]

YOU SAY YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE. THEN ABANDON YOUR HOPE. LET THE WEEDS COME THROUGH. DO YOU NOT WISH TO MEET OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS? THEY WILL KISS YOU ON BOTH CHEEKS. JUST LIKE YOUR SWEET BOY.

[ For a moment, she doesn't respond, her eyebrows climbing a slow trail upwards before she manages a lopsided smile. ]

You're welcome to my next Thanksgiving dinner if you think I'm being frivolous.

[ To be fair, the lords of Hell are capable of a hell of a lot more damage her family is, but human drama is capable of generating just as much metaphysical output (just as many fights, just as many unsettled grudges). In that sense, being allowed a glimpse into the supernatural has proved more a disillusioning experience than one of wonderment. But she isn't ungrateful (she never is) and as sharp as she can sometimes be, she never complains, either. Growing pains, family ties, expectations — you learn, you grow. ]

You don't know anything about my son.

[ For an instant, the line of his jaw draws sharp. (More anger, tamped down again at length.) He hates it, still, whenever the Strangler chooses to use that particular line against him. It's a weak spot, one he can't cover up nor one that he thinks will ever truly heal, even though he knows the longer he allows it to poison his blood, the more of a chance the growth has of pulling him under. ]

And I don't want to meet any more of you than I have to.

[ (The first time he calls her Wolls, she corrects him — twice — and tells him that her name is Wallace. Despite all of her traveling and all of her companions, no one has ever thought to call her that before and so what follows is a drawn-out explanation as to what a nickname is and the subsequent debate as to whether it's indicative of intimacy or laziness.

Needless to say it isn't the last of such debates but it certainly is a first. And that back and forth, the way Wallace's mouth ultimately crooks in bemusement by the end, colors the whole of their time together. All the long, yet-too-short years.) ]

But I like thanking you. It's— [ She pauses, searching for the word. ] —gratifying.

[ Perahia sees that spark and her eyes widen briefly and for a moment, she's Piano again. Just a girl of sixteen with red hair and a borrowed name, sleeping her life away in motel rooms and through late-night car rides from here to there and everywhere death. Death and retribution.

Call it wrong, call it skewed, but here's the truth of the matter: never once did Piano fear Perahia. Never once, despite the bruises and the terrible things he called her, did she despise him or resentment or even think to wish him away. Where Perahia saw anger and ugliness, Piano had seen neverending loneliness. And her part in the Score, her silver-bell note, sang of nothing but love and companionship because theirs was her chord — discordant but true. Perahia raged and she trailed after in sweet melody and never once — not even now — does regret cross her mind.

His anger quiets but her wonder lingers, that sharpness in her eyes giving way to a distant sort of fondness. A heated longing.

Though her fingers loosen their grip they do not slip from his hair. ]

You. [ That is the simple answer. ] I want you. Saul. You will never convince me. It's already decided.

I love you.

[ She has seen drawings in storybooks. Paintings in great tomes. Photos in magazines. Pictures of places she will never go and of people she will never meet, and for the longest time it had made Sansa sad. It had filled her with a kind of longing frowned upon in surrogates such as herself. For longing meant desire and desire had a habit of turning out just as readily as it turned in.

But out was not a direction available to her kind for out meant there instead of here, it meant beyond the great glass sea of mist and salt and fog. It meant real life when all that were was for surrogates like Sansa was the Estate.

But some of that old unhappiness, that hollow sadness that would come in seeing things she would never know, it tempers away in the wake of Mr. Baelish's smile. Smile at me always, her heart seems to sing, the sentiment warming her expression and settling in the wet of her single blue eye. Smile, and I won't need the rest of the world. I'd happily stay here. It's enough.

You're enough. ]

And what do you wish? Is it a secret? Will you tell me? [ Quickly she turns to kiss the bowl of his palm a second time. Then, her mouth lingering she trails another then another, until Sansa has nosed her way past the first inch of his sleeve, her lips breathing hot breath against the inside of his wrist. No longer a kiss, but something.

She murmurs softly: ] Please tell me.

[ The soft heat beneath the arch of Sansa's foot has grown hard and hot, offering a satisfying sort of resistance (that friction and ache that Uncle Petyr likes best of all). It's easier now to gain a bit of leverage over him, even as her own hand slips under her skirt to feel at the wet spot in her panties.

She gives a small yelp when she presses down hard enough on that damp cotton, her foot jerking awkwardly against Petyr as the sensation travels down the length of her leg with a tell-tale twitch. If it's a matter of who'll last longer between them, the advantage can easily spiral out of Sansa's hands if she isn't careful. (Sixteen years old, legs that go on for miles, and a hairtrigger located smackdab between her thighs, hotwired directly to her ears and to her mouth. A classic case of dirty in, dirty out.)

Slumping back in her chair, the strap of her dress slipping carelessly off her shoulder, Sansa gives a visible shiver beneath her own fingers. ] You rather I be nice, Uncle Petyr?

[ The light catches the mockingbird Lord Baelish wears as his collar and the warbird moves swift and sudden down the length of the bed like some magpie drawn by the glint of metal. Her bonds complain with a heavy rattle and then, without warning draw taught against their tether. The noise they make when the chain finally snaps tight is ugly and resounding like the fat toll of a bell. Still, she strains for him, her bare chest arching forward out of the loose confines of her robe, the pale peaks of her small breasts already sheened with some unnatural glow.

Even like this — demeaned as she is, her posture ignoble for such a lofty bird — her voice commands instead of requests and the narrow of her eyes still speaks: you will worship me. ]

Kneel, mockingbird. The warbird still demands your tongue.

WE KNOW HE IS MISSED. WE KNOW HE FORMS A LACK.

[ The Strangler widens her eyes to an unnatural size and then stares not only at Gavin but right through him — though what she sees and what she comprehends is most likely anathema to him. ]

WE KNOW YOU CRIED TO WATCH US TAKE ROOT. WOULD YOU CARE FOR US MORE, GAVIN KING. IF WE HAD EMBRACED HIM THE WAY WE EMBRACE THIS ONE?

[ He likes the chances he gets, here and there, to explain that kind of thing to her. Most of the time, it feels like there's very little she doesn't know, but it's in the smallest details, the unnecessary parts of the human existence, that haven't quite been filled in. That he gets to be the one to enlighten her is gratifying, too. ]

Fair enough.

[ A pause. ]

You're welcome, I guess.

[ In the orchestra, it is the Piano that reigns. It is an instrument capable of infinite grace as well as the harshest of chords. To that end, perhaps, Perahia had been a virtuoso. Despite the part that he had chosen to play — almost completely divergent from the great score, ugly and discordant, the instrument had turned it into the most beautiful song to come out of the whole mess even after his fingers had left the keys.

But if there is one thing that he knows, it is that he cannot claim any responsibility for that song.

As he looks at her now, it is that realization that colors his features. (Most of the time, she still looks sixteen to him. Still young, still lovely despite the life that she'd wasted upon him.) For a long moment, he simply worries at his lip, a crease drawn in his brow. ]

I love you, too, [ is all that he manages, though he seems to realize he is signing his own damnation all over again in saying so. ]

It's no secret, [ he murmurs, watching the path that her mouth takes along his skin. (Outside, a storm rumbles, rain pattering against the windows, rendered invisible by the curtains that he's pulled shut as he does every night when she comes back downstairs. One of the larger lamps casts an orange glow, though the one by his armchair sheds a whiter, more sterile sort of light. He doesn't have much, but he has enough. He has her.) ]

I wish for you to be happy. I wish for you to have everything you could not have before. I mean it, Sansa. Everything. I would give you the world on a string, if I could.

[ His words are, for the most part, needlessly sentimental, and he recognizes as much. (They echo, after all, of promises he had made as a young man, though then they had fallen upon deaf ears. The ghosts ring throughout the bowels of the house regardless, in photos kept in shoeboxes, in frames hung upon the walls.) ]

That is what I wish.

[ (Jesus Christ, he's a lucky man.) ]

I'd never be that ungrateful, [ he hums, gaze traveling down the length of her arm before flickering back up to her face. He's still smiling when he shakes his head in mock reproach, though that smugness dies soon enough. (Sixteen years old, legs that go on for miles, already wet — he's not the kind of man who has a lot of shame and it doesn't bother him to admit that he wants her, bad. It's not every guy who gets to live this kind of thing out.)

With a nod toward the other room: ]

Hope you've got a good excuse for the little one.

As you wish.

[ There's some perverse enjoyment to be had from making love to her like this, with her bound in chains, but he doesn't linger upon it, shedding the heaviest of his robes before climbing up onto the bed, hands settling on her waist as his lips find first her breast, then her belly, then the rise of her hip bones. It's only then that he glances up, a wicked smile curving his lips. (He doesn't usually take these kinds of indulgences, but, well. Who couldn't?) ]

Is this always how you take worship?

[ He doesn't bother waiting for an answer before his mouth follows that trail of red hair down between her legs, a laugh echoing in the back of his throat. ]

[ The walls of Mr. Baelish house murmur with the echoes of ghosts but Sansa does not recognize them from their beck and call, even though her ghosts and his ghosts are one in the same. When Sansa's Original had written her from the mainland, it'd been with letters taken down by an aging hand. The script hard instead of soft, all of the sort parts to its consonants and vowels made terse by a jittering hand. Her stories were an old woman's stories, not the one's belonging to a young pink-faced girl. The voice with which those letters had spoken was much different than the one that still whispers beneath Mr. Baelish's floorboards, which sings in every curtain flap and dancing mote of dust. A token here, a photograph there; the thought occurs to Sansa she looks just like me and then vanishes again before moving on.

She whispers something now, mouthed mutedly against the bend of Mr. Baelish's wrist, before lifting her face and drawing herself up, flush against the very front of his legs. ] And what if I asked for your happiness? For a means to it. A way to cut down your sadness.

[ Her gaze searches his face as she curls his hand to her chest. ] Would you give me that too?

[ His mouth is hot and quick upon her and does not hesitate in looking to suckle the sweetness from her human body. It is a voraciousness that marks everything the mockingbird lord does; his smile, his bow, his constant lies, his quickening lord's kiss — they are all symptoms of the hunger that burns deep inside his hollow breast. And it is that same hunger that will make Baelish a true conquerer in the end.

(The thought alone is enough to turn the warbird's own desires into a seething ache.)

Twisting against her bonds, her throat still held fast by the very end of her chain, the whole of her arches, hips leading to find purchase against that silver tongue. ]

I hate this body, [ she hisses through her teeth, the sharp exhalation of air that accompanies the words a mix of frustration and thinly-veiled pleasure. Although the warbird does not say explicitly, the implication hangs between them in the heady air: as much of a prison as her body may be, the pleasure Lord Baelish gives her makes it tolerable (makes it favorable only for passing moment). ] Free me from it. And you shall win your reward.

[ Sansa tries to laugh — light, so the sound carries proper, the way a normal laugh would — but the air gets caught up in her throat as she pulls the thin fabric of her underwear to one side and feels the cool air tickle against the wetness there. She wants to giggle at the sensation, but she can't, her head fizzling with both adrenaline and arousal as she teases herself with the suggestion of slipping an overeager finger inside (these days she doesn't touch herself unless Petyr's watching, doesn't allow herself that kind of satisfaction unless he's given it to her or wrung it from her). It's nearly enough to derail her, her foot stilling against Petyr momentarily before finally starting up again.

Though she doesn't ask for permission, her eyes beg for it regardless. (Even when she vies for the upperhand, Sansa still needs his approval, his unmitigated ugliness and desire. At the end of the day, that was the whole point and without it, she had nothing.) ] I'll take care of Bran— [ Another caught breath, her hand still teasing, teasing. ] —if you take care of me.

You might have won, if you had, [ he offers, though the words seem to grate at him to speak at all.

No, he would not have cared for the Strangler more than he does now, but his hate might have consumed him instead of being held at bay as it is now. (It is a tall order, to ask a father to kill his own son, but there is nothing uglier than the Strangler in this manifestation, and no one for whom he feels more pity than Sara Connington.) ]

Time.

[ Again, his hand finds her cheek, the tips of his fingers brushing her hair. ]

Time is the means by which that might be had. Cut a flower down and it will still take some time for the roots to fade away. You're given me so much already, but — just this one last thing, please.

[ Catelyn had always been beautiful. The last memory of her that sits within his chest is watching her fade away through the back window of a car, standing tall and proud as ever, red hair loose about her shoulders, smiling just as brightly as she had when she'd been young. (The last time he'd seen her had been to collect her application to the Estate himself. In the end, he hadn't had the heart to talk her out of it. Perhaps that had been selfish, on his part, but it's too late to change that now. Do you know, he had wondered, as his car had pulled further and further away, do you know how much I loved you?)

That beauty sits in every line of Sansa's face, but more and more, the girl steps out of her Original's shadow. And he loves her all the more for it.

When he speaks again, his voice is barely a whisper. ]

May I kiss you?

[ Somewhere on her brother's body there's a new scar for his troubles and, even though he does not say as much, Ruth understands Saul well enough — what he's capable of, how he operates, what he's thinking — to know that it's there. Part of her wants to search for it, wants to lay her hands upon his body and strip him of all of his clothes, looking to revisit all the parts of him that she's already committed to memory a dozen dozen times before. It's an opportunity to notice and learn and rewrite the memory all the things that have changed during a prolonged absence. There is no way to make up for the time that has been so roughly taken from them — no way at all, and even if there were, it would not undo that initial blow of abandonment (a wound still fresh upon Ruth's heart that has no means to heal).

Her hands are shaking both out of anger and uncertainty when she finally reaches for him, a hand gripped around each forearm. Ruth steadies her breath, a slow inhale-exhale throughout her nose, but the facade is already flawed, emotion coloring ever action and reaction. ]

Did they hurt you? [ She already knows the answer, but the words come regardless. Tell me. Show me. Let Sissy kiss it better. Let me pretend like I can still protect you. ]

[ Time.

Another thing that a surrogate cannot afford and has no right to keep for themselves. Whatever time was given to them was a gift granted from their Originals — the boon of good health and lucky circumstance on their part, a longer wait and delayed satisfaction on the part of the surrogate. In the months and weeks leading up to Sansa's eventual flight to the attic there had been many appointments scheduled, several back-to-back-to-back. And over the course of them, Sansa was to have been carefully disassembled in a last-ditch effort to salvage her Original and send the rest of her to scrap. But in the end, time had not been on CS's side as the final letter brought to her by Mr. Baelish had revealed.

In the end, time had been on Sansa's side. And now, with Mr. Baelish's help, she would have as much of it as any normal girl. She would have years upon years upon years. She would never complete. She would live and die as an old woman and, if Sansa had her way, what separated her now from that final moment was simply a lifetime spent by her former counselor's side. (A living, breathing girl in exchange for a beloved ghost.)

He touches her hair and Sansa leans into the touch, the gesture sweet and kittenish and colored shy. ]

Yes. [ Sansa's heart trills again in her chest, the songbird of her soul flapping joyously from its perch only to hover in her throat. ] Nothing would make me happier— than to be kissed by you, Mr. Baelish.

[ A number of responses immediately spring to life upon his tongue (who will keep my bed warm when you are gone) but he keeps them to himself, humming just once as he continues his ministrations. Cersei would have his head, he knows (and more of him, if she had her way), if she ever found out, and the risk alone is enough to make the act sweet. But then, too, is the pleasure that the warbird takes from it, a demigod at the mercy — though never completely, he is not such a fool as to believe that — of the joys of the flesh.

Each shudder and each twist of her body is enough to send new thrills down his pine, his ardency burning ever more apparent in the way that he kisses her. And yes, he aches, too, but there'll be time for that later on. ]

[ He glances once at the nearby hallway, the smile on his face nothing short of razor-sharp. (Grin like that could split a hair in two.) She likes him sweet, but she likes him ugly, too, and it's in that balance that Petyr has found himself caught like a fly in honey, too delighted by the ugliness he finds mirrored inside her to notice that he's drowning at all. (Though, that said, he's well aware he needs to be careful. He may by the adult, but at the end of the day he knows who Ned Stark would believe.)

He's half breathless when he speaks again (too noticeable a weakness, though his senses are too hazy for him to truly care). ]

've I ever let you down, honey?

[ He lies by her side and Alayne turns towards him gingerly to meet him, her body seeming small against his even though time as proven her to be longer in both leg and torso. Her mouth presses soft kisses to the lids of his eyes, to his cheeks and chin, the effort making her breathless and flush, a damp fever threatening to sheen her face and neck. ]

You're being too generous, I was a fool once.

[ She had been many things once upon a time: foolish, innocent, blind. Once she'd been a daughter of the North and though winter still sings through Alayne's veins, the wolves no longer count her among their own. Now she is a Baelish or will be soon; vows, once spoken, cannot be unspoken and she'd swore in the eyes of her familial blood that she would not be broken from Petyr, not at any cost.

She puffs out a shallow exhale. Her whole body trembles in his arms; it'd be best that she rest but Alayne is filled with a restless anxious feeling, like she fears this happiness will somehow be shortlived (the baby stillborn or some other way afflicted, herself ill or dying, Petyr once again alone). ]

You changed me. [ Alayne kisses him again, lingeringly. ] You made me strong. You helped make this happiness possible.

CLOSED | prompt eight | RUIN

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