m_findlow

Title: A paler shade of white
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Characters: Sansa Stark, Petyr Baelish
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 790 words
Content notes: I don't own them. They belong to George R R Martin.
Author notes: Written for wallwalker's prompt "Any, any, soft fur" at fic_promptly
Summary: A cloak of fur comes with a heavy price

Sansa wasn't expecting the knock on the door. She was coming to enjoy the moments of solitude in the Eyrie when she wasn't required to ease her Sweetrobin's cries and protests. No one else in the Eyrie seemed to be able to calm him the way she could. She didn't know how or why. She'd never been able to tame her wild little sister Arya, and Bran was just as much a wild spirit as she was, forever scaling the walls of Winterfell, much to their mother's displeasure. Now she was both mother and sister to a sickly little boy who would as likely become her betrothed, and knowing it would also as like not be his bed she would be made to warm.

Nor did she want to spend time walking the halls of the Eyrie, forced to perpetuate the lies that had kept her head on her shoulders thus far, and neither did she want Lord Baelish's attentions any more than was strictly necessary. True, she owed him her life, but she now knew that he desired far more than her safety.

Yes, once she had longed for company at all hours of the day, her dear friend Jeyne Poole at King's Landing who had been her dearest companion as they whispered about how handsome prince Joffrey was, and taking turns to style each other's hair in the latest fashions of King's Landing. Jeyne was gone now, as was Arya, and Bran, and everyone else she knew.

'Come in,' she said, praying that they wouldn't force more food and wine upon her. She couldn't find it in her to swallow a thing.

The door slowly swept open, revealing Lord Baelish, his nearly trimmed beard and fine doublet slashed in the blue and white of the Eyrie. He always looked so elegant.

'My dear Alayne, why do you shut yourself away so? Little birds should not be caged. I would prefer to see you playing in the snow.'

'Playing in the snow is for little girls,' she replied, remembering how innocent she'd been back then, rebuilding the walls of Winterfell with snow and ice that had been torn down by iron and burnt by fire.

'That's true,' he said, perching himself on the chair in the corner of the room. 'You are a woman grown now, Alayne, and a beautiful one at that. No amount of pale winter's snow, nor clouds drifting high over the vale could hope to match your beauty.'

Sansa felt awkward having Petyr this closer to her, and alone. He gazed at her longingly as she kept her eyes set on the floor.

'I brought you a gift,' he said, passing over the parcel and placing it on the edge of the bed next to her. She lifted her eyes, long auburn hair framing her sad face. She reluctantly reached across to untie the silken ribbon, unveiling the object inside.

She brushed a hand over it, feeling the delicate white fur beneath her fingertips, edged with samite of a midnight blue, reveling in its beauty and softness under her hands.

'It's a cloak,' Petyr said, rising to come and stand next to her, pulling it out full length so that she could admire it properly.

'Doeskin and rabbit fur. I had it made especially. We'll be leaving the Eyrie soon, and the winter is already bitterly cold.' He draped it around her shoulders and did up the clasp, an intricate nightingale, forged in bright silver.

'It's beautiful,' she said. 'Thank you, Lord Baelish.'

Her Aunt Lysa had many beautiful dresses and cloaks, which she had worn when they'd been locked away in the Eyrie alone, but now standing in the shoes of the bastard daughter, she was returned to plain dresses in drab shades, as befit her birth. But this was of another kind altogether. It lacked jewels, but was all the more beautiful for it.

'I thought that now that you are the daughter of the Lord of the Vale, you should have something lovely of your own.' He leaned down and placed a kiss in her hair. 'Even Alayne Stone is allowed to be beautiful now.'

He swept out the door just as quietly as he'd slipped in, leaving her alone once more.

She fingered the edge of it, catching her pale face in the mirror, not recognizing the woman who looked back at her. The fur was warm and the doeskin supple; the greatest gift she had ever received from anyone, even her father. Except her father was gone. Lord Baelish was her father now.

Sansa Stark was dead, the girl she'd been long gone. She was Alayne Stone, and that was the true cost of the fur that graced her shoulders.