The resemblance had been staggering the first time he saw her. For the space of a breath he was a boy again, the weight of the years and the burden of mistakes gone, Catelyn smiling at him before it had all gone wrong. Then he had blinked, and the eyes were different, and the lines of her face were subtly wrong, and then he was introducing himself to Sansa Stark as easily as if he hadn't been momentarily crippled by memories. She had smiled the vague smile of politeness and turned on to curtsy to someone else and mouth the lies someone else had put on her tongue, and the possibilities rose up before him too fast to absorb. She was like redemption, forgiveness and a second chance if only he could reach her, but even while his blood warmed with illicit desire his mind saw the rich potential of her pretty face and lying lips.
He had scoped her out as subtly as he could, which was to say by the time he was done he knew even the details of her gowns better than she did herself and even her loving, too-trusting father had no idea of his interest. Joffrey was a bad choice, a terrible match for her, a brutish bully too stupid to follow instructions he did not understand. At least he proved manageable, with the right persuasion, while Sansa survived with a silent tenacity and unconscious knack for social maneuvering that surprised him not at all. Her youth, her innocence, her foolishness, were just details, accessories to the larger piece that was more clever than she showed even to herself and harder at the core than anyone but he gave her credit for. A Stark in truth, although he hadn't seen it at first, too blinded by the past to properly see. She was not Catelyn. But then he wasn't Petyr either, not as he had been; he was richer, wiser, older. The girl who looked so like Cat was younger, prettier, and much, much better at lying. She hadn't gotten that from her sternly truthful father or the calm honesty of her mother. Petyr sometimes liked to imagine that it was his influence, bleeding over from another life where he was her father and Cat her mother. But the fantasy could never last very long, and more and more often he found Sansa's name breathing past his lips rather than Cat's.
It was a strange turn of events, to have the focus of his life shift out from under him, but Petyr Baelish was nothing if not adaptable.