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It is when they dance at the Queen in the North’s coronation feast he recognizes the nature of their relationship has changed, has twisted and transformed into something he never imagined even in his worst nightmares. It is in the way the bastard places his hands on her, one gentle and reverent at her waist, pressing carefully to her ribcage, as if nervous his hand might slip up or down to an inappropriate place, and the other holding her hand firmly, as if terrified she’ll fall if he lets go. It is in the way the Queen dances, still graceful and lovely as ever but with an awkward hitch to her steps that he suspects only he detects, a jumpiness that comes when one dances with a lover, not a brother.
Yes, it is at the coronation feast he first realizes, but it is not until he wanders into the godswood in search of her weeks later that he is forced to acknowledge it. He finds her nearly naked with a head of bastard black curls between her legs and her head tipped back, mouth open, in a way he has only ever witnessed in his dreams.
Rage courses through his veins, pumping and pumping until he can hear nothing but the rushing of it in his ears, drowning out the Queen’s soft moans and her quiet gasps and the obscene noises the bastard is making. But he stays, and he watches, watches the Queen runs her hands over the soft, perfect, milky white flesh of her breasts, watches the bastard move his hands up the long lengths of her legs while he licks and sucks at the mound of auburn curls at their juncture. He wonders if this is what his Cat looked like in throes of passion, and, even in his fury, he finds his own pleasure there, imagining himself in the bastard's place.
The next day he puts on a mask. He remains by her side, smiling as if nothing has happened and playing his new role as the ever-charming Hand of the Queen to perfection. All day, he watches her soothe belligerent lordlings with a simple smile, watches her melt away the concerns of a winter town merchant with a gentle touch on the forearm, watches her act as a true Queen with her chin pointed toward the heavens, her back straight and stiff as Valyrian steel, and her eyes always watching, always seeing. All day, he watches her use the gifts he gave her, watches her wear the crown he had fashioned for her with his own gold the day they marched upon Winterfell and slaughtered the Boltons.
The silly, fearful girl he plucked from King’s Landing could never of done any of it without him. If he had left her to the lions all those years ago, most like she would have died there a trembling hostage instead of a terrifying Queen; she would have died there with the name Lannister engraved on her tombstone instead of Stark.
It was he who created Sansa Stark, Queen in the North. It was he who taught her to listen, to cajole, to understand, and to believe that even the humblest pieces like them could rise up and seize the power they deserved. It was he who first told her life was not a song, and then it was he who made her life a song. It should all belong to him—her crown, her castle, her cunt—for she would have none of it without him, and yet it is Jon Snow, the ghost of Brandon and Eddard Stark come back to haunt him that she chooses to share them with. It is her bastard brother-cousin she gifts with her magnificent red gold hair (Cat’s hair), her soft, pink lips (Cat’s lips), and her keen summer blue eyes (Cat’s eyes).
When the Dragon Queen arrives at Winterfell to treat with the Ice Queen, he knows exactly what Sansa means to do before the words even leave her lips. Daenerys Targaryen wants her to marry her nephew Aegon to seal peace between their two kingdoms. Petyr has encouraged the match, but instead Sansa smiles prettily and suggests she marry the Southron Queen’s other nephew instead. Everyone listening on gasps, and it strikes him not for the first time that he is completely surrounded by idiots. He could see their infatuation with each other as easily as he could see their faces.
A month later, when the bastard drapes his red and black cloak over the Queen’s shoulders and presses his lips against hers, Petyr ignores the twisting in his gut and allows himself a smile. Far greater challenges than Stark’s cold, sullen bastard have stood in his way. Killing Sansa Stark’s first two husbands proved simple enough, after all—an opportunistic whore willing to rename herself Tysha to slit the first’s throat in his sleep and a greedy Vale soldier to surreptitiously cut down the second during the Battle for Winterfell. It is because of him she is not called Lady Lannister or suffering Harrold Hardyng’s clumsy advances night after night. Perhaps he’ll tell her someday, tell her of all the husbands he had to kill to win her hand and their thrones.
He decides he’ll let the bastard get a child on her first, a child with dull Stark gray eyes and black hair to serve as the heir to the North, and then he’ll ensure the brooding King is met with a very sudden and very tragic death. He’ll stand by her until then as he always does, whispering in her ear, conjuring golden dragons out of thin air to fill her coffers, and pacifying her enemies with clever words, and when Jon Snow falls he’ll ask for her hand and she’ll see this is how it was meant to be all along. Your Grace they’ll all have to call him then. Petyr Baelish the King in the North—oh, how he loves to imagine the look on the face of Ned Stark’s ghost when he mouths those words in the privacy of his chambers.
Eight moons after the wedding Sansa is full with child and glowing. Every gentle touch the bastard places on her stomach reminds him of the poison he has hidden beneath the loose floorboard under his bed. Though he imagines he’ll always despise the babe, the ugly, squalling creature can’t come soon enough. His head is itching for a crown. His entire body is itching for Sansa Stark’s touch.
“My—my lord Hand, the Queen wishes to—to speak with you.”
The boy’s stutters make his jaw clench. He’ll never understand Sansa's choice to appoint her first husband’s former squire, the sputtering, blushing Podrick Payne, as her sworn shield. But that Sansa needs him is enough to soothe his annoyance with the boy. “Lead the way then.”
He is surprised when Payne directs him to the Throne Room instead of the Queen’s solar. It comes as an even greater surprise that Sansa is wearing her crown and sitting on her throne with the bastard hovering by her side. Podrick clears his throat and announces, “Your Grace, Lord Petyr Baelish, as requested.”
The Queen usually regards young Ser Podrick with a radiant smile that makes him blush like a maiden, so when she only nods, her mouth fixed in a hard line, he knows something is amiss. “Thank you, Ser Podrick. Stand guard by the door, if you will.”
Petyr strides forward, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart. It is merely a mild case of paranoia that sends it racing, and he will feel foolish for it afterwards because he has left no loose ends, he has always kept his hands clean. “What can I do for you, Your Grace?”
The bastard is glaring at him and opens his mouth to speak, only to be silenced by Sansa’s hand on his arm. “When the Boltons claimed the North and Winterfell for their own, Tywin Lannister gifted them with my sister, Arya Stark. Except it was not Arya Stark that left King’s Landing for the North but an impostor. Do you recall?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” I produced the insipid girl myself.
“I have spent many nights wondering who that girl might have been, but she disappeared before she arrived at the Wall. Most believe her dead.”
She is dead. I made sure of it. “Yes, Your Grace, I remember.”
“But I have just received the most fascinating letter,” Sansa continues, as the bastard hands her a folded piece of parchment. “Its author suggests that the girl is not dead. It suggests that her name is Jeyne Poole and that she still very much alive in Braavos in the company of Theon Greyjoy.”
He feels his heart skip and his palms grow cold and clammy, but he forces his expression to remain untroubled. “She was a friend of yours, yes? Are you sure it is actually her and not just some impostor hoping to benefit from the kindness and wealth of the Northron Queen?”
The Queen shakes her head. “No, she knows things only the true Jeyne Poole would know. I am quite confident she is my old friend. After receiving her first letter many moons ago, I beseeched her to return to Winterfell, but she declined. Five letters later and she has finally confessed why it is she fears returning here so much.”
It takes everything he has to keep his voice calm. “And why is that, Your Grace?”
“It seems she fears my Lord Hand,” Sansa answers, and he feels like he is about to vomit right there in the Throne Room at the Queen’s feet. “According to her account, you took her after the Lannisters claimed me as their hostage and forced her into a life of prostitution. According to her account,” she continues, her voice rising and tears glistening in the corners of her eyes, “you placed her in a brothel where she was whipped and beaten and forced to offer services against her will. According to—”
“Your Grace,” he interrupts, his voice cracking just slightly, a flaw that pains him even more than the disgust in Sansa Stark’s eyes, “I was only carrying out direct orders from Queen Cersei—”
“And you think that makes it acceptable?” Sansa screams, rising from her throne in a fit of truly glorious anger. Even as he sees everything he has worked so hard for slipping away from him, he can’t help but think she has never been more beautiful than she is in that moment. “You could have placed her in an inn as a barmaid, could have had her scrub the brothel’s laundry, but you chose to have—to have her trained in that way. She was my best friend, Petyr!”
The bastard grips her elbow, and Petyr suspects his grasp is the only thing that keeps her from lunging forward to claw his eyes out like the wolf she didn’t realize she was until she stepped back inside these walls. Perhaps he should have known better than to bring her back here, to reunite her with her Stark heritage. “Your Grace—”
“And then you allowed Tywin Lannister to sell her off to Ramsay Snow, who, who…” Her voice falters, and it is clear she cannot bring herself to voice the words. “Why, Petyr? How could you do such a thing? She was barely twelve-years-old!”
He almost feels like laughing because, in truth, Jeyne Poole is the least of his crimes against the Queen and her family. At the same time, it irks him it might be that stupid, meaningless daughter of a steward that will be his downfall. “Your Grace—”
“I’m afraid,” Sansa interrupts, “Jeyne’s letter has forced me to reevaluate our relationship, Petyr. You have always been very helpful to me, that I won’t deny, but I suspect you have been lying to me about a great many things. How was it exactly that Tywin Lannister came to know of the Tyrell plot to marry me to Willas? Ser Dontos was in your employ, and he is the only one I—”
He ought to lie, to blame the foiled plot on a loose-lipped Tyrell henchman or the eunuch’s little birds, but he is suddenly so enraged that she can’t see that everything he did was for her, that she’d be nothing without him that he snaps, “I did what I had to do! You would have been foolish enough to go along with them. You would have gone from being the lion’s pawn to being the rose’s pawn. You would have grown up to be as weak as your father. Is that what you wanted for yourself, Your Grace?”
Her face contorts with rage at the mention of her father, but he doesn’t care. That man’s influence is her most glaring flaw, one he has sought relentlessly to eliminate since he first laid eyes upon her. “What I want is a Hand that does not lie to me, my lord,” she answers. “What I want is a Hand that would never dream of forcing a young, innocent girl into a life of prostitution against her will. The punishment for your crimes—”
He doesn’t hear the rest of her words. All he can focus on is the sword the bastard is drawing from the scabbard at his hip. He feels someone push him down on to his knees, and all of a sudden he is fifteen-years-old again fighting a fool’s duel with a dark-haired Stark for the hand of his fiery Tully bride. It crosses his mind to call for Ser Podrick to lend him his sword, so he can meet the bastard’s inevitable blows and declare that Sansa’s love belongs to him. But life is not a song, and he is not a hero, and he knows exactly what is about to happen whether he likes it or not.
As the bastard descends upon him, he can only see Brandon Stark, sneering and mocking him, as he slashes the sword adorned with Catelyn’s favor across his gut. The scar running over his abdomen burns and itches like it has been struck back open. He looks down, half expecting to see blood soaking through his doublet.
“No.” The voice is soft but powerful. The Queen walks forward in her winter blue gown, so gracefully it looks like she is floating. “I am the accuser. I will carry out the sentence. That is what father would have wanted.”
She looks as terrifying as she does beautiful when she walks toward him with the silver dagger he gifted her with in her tiny hand. She presses the blade to his throat. “Do you have any last words, my lord?”
He decides then that the gods have cursed him. They have cursed him for daring to rise above his allotted station in life, for daring to love a Great Lord’s daughter, for daring to imagine himself as a king instead of a lowly lord of stones and sheep pellets. He looks up at her, sees bright Tully blue eyes, freckled, lily-white skin, and a mane of silky, auburn hair and knows she is the only one that can break the curse, she has always been the one. “Cat,” he whispers, “Please.”
“Oh, Petyr.”
The dagger slashes across his throat. It’s a messy cut that will make him suffer before he dies. The horror in her eyes suggests she meant to make a cleaner one, and he revels in the fact that she remains imperfect, even in this small way. He sways backwards, as the blood spurts from his throat, soaking her gown. Tears are streaming down her face when the Stark bastard wraps his arms around her. I’ve lost again, he thinks, a gurgled, bitter laugh escaping his lips. I’ve been fighting this duel my entire life only to lose again.
History repeats itself in the most brutal ways.