#mostlytheavengers

His fingers are soft, insistent, firm, just like everything he does in regards to her.  They burrow into her hair, massaging against her scalp in circular motions.  If the tether between her mind and her body were shorter, she would say it felt nice.  Distantly, she’s aware of the acrid odor of the dye, poorly masked with chemically induced floral fragrances.  Underneath all of that is the scent of Armani cologne and mint.  She knows the edge of the tub is uncomfortable and cold against her bare thighs.  She can pick out the thin, subtle striping in his tie, loosened around his collar.  His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, his deft fingers parting and pulling different sections of her hair.  

All of this, she knows and sees and feels and smells.  At the same time, she doesn’t know, see, feel, or smell anything because really, she’s not there.

Welcome to your life.  There’s no turning back.

“There we go, Alayne.  Now, we just have to wait until it sets in.”

It takes her a millisecond longer than it should to register that he’s speaking to her.  She’s still not used to the name, but she’s trying.  It’s just as hard as one would think, shedding a name in favor of another.  It’s the title of her identity, but her old identity is too dangerous to wear anymore and so she has to pull on another, even if it doesn’t fit quite right.  She has to break it in, walk it around the house.

" You’re Alayne now.  Alayne Stone.” He had said to her as they drove away from the mansion.  He had been going the speed limit and using all his turn signals, but she wanted him to be faster, more reckless, to match the pace of her pulse. “I don’t want it to just be a new way you introduce yourself.  You need to be Alayne.  You need to think as Alayne.  You need to dream as Alayne.”

Petyr - Dad - steps away, removing his thin gloves with a snap.  The face staring back at her is Alayne’s face, not Sansa’s.  Her forehead is smeared with brown and her hair is thick and wet with it, allowing her to imagine what it will look like when it’s finished.  She’s never seen herself in anything other than auburn before.  Everyone had always told her she was a mirror image of her mother, but now the mirror says something different and that helps her tear herself away from the person she once was.  

She tries a smile as he collects all the packaging trash and works her face until it looks less like a grimace.

Even when you sleep, we will find you acting on your best behavior. Turn your back on Mother Nature.

Her new father lifts his head and smiles back, but his looks more real than hers. He’s had a lot of practice.

"You’ll need to work on that, sweetling. How about I give you some privacy, hm? I’ll go dispose of this," he raises the bag of incriminating trash, "And attend to a few things. In half an hour, wash that out."

She tries Alayne’s voice.

"Okay." It’s louder and deeper than Sansa’s.

On his way out, he bends and kisses her cheek. His lips are soft, but his beard isn’t. That kiss she feels with all of her and it burns hotter than the one he gave her on the lips a few days before.

When she hears the motel door close, she wanders out of the bathroom and into the room, seating herself on the edge of her hard mattress. CNN plays on the television, but there’s no mention of the death of a rich widow. Stock numbers tick by at the bottom of the screen and she occupies herself by listing the full names the initials represent until BRTN rolls across. It’s down by a lot of points. A ripple of resentful satisfaction goes through her, even though the initials don’t mean anything to her anymore.

A video of a shriveled dwarf in a custom suit appears on screen, pushing through a throng of paparazzi and reporters flanked by two officers as they discuss his impending trial for the murder of Joffrey Baratheon. He had died by overdose, but foul play was certainly involved. Then, Sansa’s picture appeared. The last survivor of the famous Stark family, wanted for questioning regarding her ex-boyfriend’s death, gone missing.

That’s not her anymore. None of this has anything to do with her. Alayne repeats this in her head until she almost believes it.

She goes through her bag and pulls a pair of sweats and a t-shirt from it. She had packed in a hurry, but it hadn’t been difficult. She’d never unpacked in the first place. Her razor is nowhere to be found, which is strange. In fact, she distinctly remembers taking it because she berated herself for caring about something so superfluous as her body hair. Now, she wants it for the routine; something as simple and uncomplicated as shaving her legs. But it’s gone.

She has to laugh. He took it.

It’s my own design. It’s my own remorse.

The shower is too hot for comfort, but the sting brings a relief all its own. Dye coils in the water, mingling and slithering on its way to the drain. There’s a bit of red in it. The best lies have a bit of truth to them. He had said that when he picked the color. Chestnut, it had said on the box. She imagines it might be the red from her hair washing away and suddenly, she remembers -

Aunt Lysa’s dead eyes in her pale face. A halo of red brown and blood, so much blood, pooling beneath her. Drying tears, hers and Sansa’s. The ringing echo of a gunshot in her ears. Mr. Baelish’s hands cupping her face, his eyes boring into hers. Had she been screaming?

"Breathe."

Those were Sansa’s memories, not Alayne’s, but they stayed there anyway, images attached to a mind, not a name. She leans against the tile and slides down, shaking. The water is hot, but she’s so cold. Her breaths come in short pants. She can’t see - she doesn’t know if it’s the steam, her tears, the water, or her own dizziness blinding her.

If she had eaten, she would be retching. Instead, she’s fisting her hands in her hair and tugging hard, anything to distract from the overwhelming doom in the pit of her chest. It’s more than sobs leaving her mouth - it’s anguish and panic in low, trembling moans and whimpers. She’s not sure for how long she sits there, but even when the water cool and runs clear, the feelings don’t subside.

The curtain opens and the water cuts off.

Help me to decide. Help me make the most of freedom…

She lifts her head slowly as he steps into the tub and sits, clothes and all. Alayne tries her best not to acknowledge her own nudity - he’s her father - and is boneless when he pulls her into his lap. The water on her skin and hair soaks into his shirt and pants and when she opens her mouth to apologize, all she does is cry harder. He holds her tightly and rocks her against his chest as she curls into a ball, head tucked under his jaw. There’s comfort here. It’s warm and bristly, it smells expensive and clean, but it’s unfamiliar and only just trustworthy. It scares her, but it doesn’t occur to her to pull away when she needs it so badly.

His fingers curl against her thigh and stroke her back, brushing through the clinging wet hair. A rush of inane whispers leave his mouth, rumbling from his chest. She feels rather than hears them as they chase her tears away.

"Good girl, Alayne. Sweet girl. Poor girl. It will all be fine, it will all be alright. Let it out, now. You don’t have to be brave with me."

But she does have to be brave, doesn’t she? She has to be what Alayne is and Alayne is more than Sansa was. She must be disappointing him.

"I’m sorry." She croaks. He pauses.

A finger beneath her chin lifts her head and turns it toward him. Something weighs down his features, hooding his eyes and parting his lips. It makes her breath catch as something sparks in her belly. There’s anxiety, but anxiety of a different sort, the kind that borders anticipation. His hands cup either side of her face. Something twitches by her leg.

He presses careful lips to her cheeks and forehead, raining gentle kisses over her eyelids and the bridge of her nose.

"Don’t apologize. You’re safe, Sansa."

She’s not his daughter anymore. Not right now. And as she leans forward to meet his lips with hers and utters, “Mr. Baelish,” he’s not her father.

"Petyr."

And of pleasure.

Desperately, she needs someone to be something to her, so badly that she’s willing to mistake his desire for hers. Sansa knows he loved her mother - he had said so himself - and she allows herself to be a replacement because right now, he’s her replacement for every other person that had been in her life. He’s the fairy tale prince she wanted Joffrey to be, the friend Jeyne had been, the father Ned was, the protector Sandor had tried to be.  

His mouth is on hers.  He tastes of the mint his scent suggested.  She’s not inexperienced in this, and it might be her current emotional state, but the way his lips slant against hers sends her pulse racing.  Her fingers claw into his shirt as she pulls herself closer, wondering if she could ever be close enough, if she could just open him up and climb in.  She shifts her body to face him properly, legs opening to straddle him and he doesn’t stop her.  Maybe he doesn’t need this like she does, but he wants this, and she can feel that want grinding against her beneath damp fabric.

Petyr (Mr. Baelish, her father) threads a hand through the hair at the back of her head and pulls backward, exposing her neck to his teeth and tongue.  She was so numb earlier but now, she’s a livewire, like he’s pulled all her nerves up and out to tease them back to life.  His free hand strokes at her side, following the curve of her breast, waist, and hip before gripping her ass and guiding the undulations against him she didn’t even know she was making.  Then, he uses that hand to lift her onto her knees and his open-mouthed kisses descend to her breasts.  His tongue lathes across her nipples and his beard brushes against her bare skin and it feels, it feels, it feels incredible, but most importantly, she feels.  She’s making soft noises now and were she more coherent, she might be embarrassed by them, or try to make sounds more in line with what she’s heard on television or in those movies Robb had she and Jeyne would sometimes sneak and watch.

When his hand reaches between her legs and strokes her, she keens low and whispery, and probably sounds as if she’s in pain.

There’s a room where the light won’t find you, holding hands while it all comes tumbling down.

She had been afraid for so long she didn’t remember what it was like to feel anything else.  The lights in the interrogation room flickered, further irritating her eyes, so dry from sleeplessness that they felt like the lids had been peeled away.  They were trying to break her, a seventeen-year-old girl, with nothing to hide.  There was no clock in here, but for what she thought had to be hours, they had been coming in and out of her room, sometimes kind and cajoling, sometimes fire and brimstone.  

Sansa had given them the story, had written it, had told it backwards and forwards.  She had seen him die.  She had been at the party, but no, she was not intoxicated herself and no, she did not see anyone slip anything into his codeine syrup, or give him the coke.  At that point, the detectives had crawled so thoroughly beneath her skin that she wondered if she was telling the truth.

The door opened then and she lifted her eyes from the scratched surface of the table and pulled her cold hands from underneath her thighs.  It wasn’t who she expected.

“Mr. Baelish?”

“Call me Petyr.  Get up, we’re leaving.”

“Wha—what are you doing here?”

“I’m your attorney.”

“You’re my lawyer?”

“Yes.  Come on, now.”

She stood slowly and walked to him, relief, confusion, and suspicion coursing through her in equal parts.  His hand at the small of her back guided her from the room and from the building.

When they do, I’ll be right behind you.

Sansa focused on the barrel of the gun pointed at her face until there was nothing left in her line of sight.  The bodyguard stood outside the doorway, apparently impervious to the impending murder behind him.

“You whore!  You nasty bitch! I took you in!  I hid you!  And this is how you repay me?  By seducing him?!” Aunt Lysa’s wail was shrill, wavering up and down like a siren.

“I didn’t!  He just—he kissed me! I pulled away, I swear it—”

“LIAR!”

She clicked the safety off. The sound was louder than her screams. Sansa staggered backward until the wall met her open palms.

“No, please, Aunt Lysa—”

“Everyone who ever tried to stand between us is dead and you’ll be next!”

“Lysa.”

They both turned to see Mr. Baelish walking into the kitchen, brows drawn upward slightly in concern, but otherwise, unruffled.

“Petyr?”

“Put the gun down, Lysa.”

“Is this who you want?!  This little girl?  You’re sick.”

“No, I don’t.  I’ll give her back to the police.  I promise.”

“It’s because she looks like her, isn’t it?”

“Put the gun down.” His voice rose in volume, but it was too controlled to be rightly described as a shout.  

She dropped the gun and fell to her knees.  Sansa did the same, her eyes still drawn to the dull metal on the marble.  He crossed the distance to his wife, grabbing the gun as he did so. Petyr held her sobbing frame and pulled her to her feet.  

“Oh, Lysa.  I have only loved one woman.  Only one.  My entire life.”

Lysa smiled and it was a rapturous, wispy thing Sansa saw in profile.  It churned her stomach to see it. In that one minute, she saw the future in the contemptuous curl of his lips.

“Your sister.”

Sansa screamed, but it was too late.  He let loose one round into her stomach and, when she stumbled backward, another into her chest.

So glad we’ve almost made it.

Her knees buckle as he pushes in one finger and then another, hissing his satisfaction, murmuring something about her wetness that makes her flush and tighten. She rests her forehead on his scalp, her drying hair a curtain over them as she fumbles with the buttons of his shirt. She manages to free the top few before he rubs her clit with his thumb and she stutters out a moan. His free hand unbuttons his pants. She reaches down and feels the hard length of him.

Then, Sansa is being lowered and she uses his hand to guide him in. It stings at first as she stretches around him, accommodating him into her. It’s been awhile. She sinks slowly, but he bucks upward and the sheer pleasure is compounded by the slight pain. Clumsily, she rides him, a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. He takes her fingers in his and guides it to her sex.

"Touch yourself." He commands roughly and she does. The bliss is blinding and she releases a strangled howl. He was right, he’s always right.

He’s unforgiving. She loses her balance so he holds her hips and just goes, thrusting up into a frenzied rhythm she can’t follow. Her fingers draw slippery circles. It’s so intense it almost hurts. He still talks to her, saying filthy things that drive her to the edge and push her over. It starts from the bottom and moves upward, sending her into spasms inside and out. Her legs shake, her hands and toes clench, her back bends and she cries her climax into the echoes of the bathroom. Beneath her, he drives into her, drawing her pleasure further and further out. Just when she thinks she might break, that it’s too much, he pulls out and spurts hot strands of himself onto her belly and thighs.

So sad they had to fade it.

Tremors still wrack through her in rough intervals as he grows soft against her stomach. She can still feel the throb in tune with her heartbeat. He rubs up and down her back, her head tucked under his chin.

"Why have you been helping me? Really." She mumbles into his throat. "Tell me why."

"Because you’ll help me get what I want."

"And what do you want?"

"Everything."

They’re quiet for a few moments, and then: “What do you want, Alayne?”

"To survive."

"And what does Sansa want?"

It takes her a few seconds to consider. The image of herself winning, of Cersei falling victim to her own schemes, of every single person who had ever done her and her family harm failing in everything they attempt. She smiles and it’s a real one.

"Revenge."