Take Care of the Ones That You Lost
DISCLAIMER: I don't own a thing, this was written for the purpose of entertainment only.
This is a continuation of my Mafia-themed series, preceeded by "Liar, Liar", "The Mockinbird's Song", "Players and Pieces", "Ghost of the Past" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger"
*A/N* Sooo... what feels like several years ago, Tommyginger planted this idea of writing a pregnant!fic in my head (I hate those with a passion, which is basically why it'd be such a great challenge) and in my process of revisiting my old drafts, I found this. There are some more snippets to it that are all over the place and basically form one giant gaping plot hole... At the moment, I don't have the time and energy to write anything much, leave alone a monster such as this thing would become were I to actually go through with it - but I am really attached to this little bit of it and I hope you'll all enjoy it anyways!
Petyr sighed and buried his face in his hands for a moment, willing his brain to function. For Heaven's sake, he'd slept almost seven hours, more than usual, how could he be this tired?
"The market's stable so far," he said, glad to hear his voice sounded perfectly awake. "Most of the companies are running well, Trident Inc.'s struggling a little, but I'll handle it."
Cersei's green eyes were on his face and he wondered if she could see how tired he was, and what she thought it meant. "Good. Have you talked to Varys about Joff's wedding yet?"
"Haven't seen him today," he replied, "I'll send him an e-mail. What are we looking at?"
"Some eight hundred guests," Cersei said haughtily, clearly bored with the conversation. "I don't have time to discuss this with you, Baelish, talk to Varys."
"Sure," Petyr replied, putting a small smile on his lips. "I'll find him the money. Call if you need me," he added with a touch of sarcasm and got to his feet. "Goodbye."
Cersei deigned him with a cold glance, visibly displeased he had taken initiative to leave – without her permission.
Her playing at queen always made him smile, inwardly, of course.
He fished his phone out of his coat pocket on the way out. "I've sent a car to fetch you, go straight to the practice, do not stop," he instructed by ways of a greeting.
"How stupid d'you think I am?" came the slightly annoyed response.
"The doctor is safe," he said, ignoring her remark, "he won't talk to a soul."
"Please tell me you bribed him." He could hear the anxiousness in her voice. How adorable.
"Amongst other things, yes, I bribed him," Petyr replied with a smirk and called for the elevator.
"Amongst other things?"
"Well, I promised him extra payment once everything is over if all goes well, and suggested I'd get his daughter a career at one of my businesses if it doesn't."
"You what?"
"Relax. He'll treat you with utmost care," he said, still smirking, and stepped into the elevator.
"You can't do that to people-"
He sighed and threw the flickering light in the corner an annoyed glance. "I've done this for years, and I will keep doing it. This is what I do for a living and now stop pretending you didn't know that."
"Well, I don't want you doing it in my name," she hissed. Oh, so now she was angry. He rolled his eyes and watched the floors go by on the small display.
"Thank you for looking after me would have been quite enough, sweetling," he gave back in a bored voice. He'd reached the basement.
"I won't thank you for blackmailing an old friend of my parents," she replied hotly. "I went to school with Jeyne!"
"And so long as her father does what I've told him to do, dear little Jeyne will come to no harm."
"Petyr." Her voice sounded a little choked now. "Please don't do that, please-"
"Don't get worked up, dear, it's not good for you," he said gently, not even trying to keep the mock out of his voice. His fingers found the car keys. "The car should be there within the next five minutes. Do me a favour and let the chauffeur drive this time?"
"Could you be any more of a condescending ar-" she stammered, her voice thick with anger, but he interrupted her.
"There now. No such bad words," he said, crouching down in front of his car to throw a look underneath before he got in. "And believe me, yes, I could."
She opted for cold silence, which just amused him even more.
"I've got someone else to blackmail, might take a while. Don't wait up," he said drily and ended the call before she could answer.
He worked his way through traffic jam after traffic jam, cursing rush hour and the fact he lived in the city at every traffic light, parked the car at his place, then took the bus back the way he'd come. Precaution was everything – if anyone found out where he was going, not only would all his planning be for naught, but it would also lose him Cersei's hard-earned trust for good. He couldn't risk that.
There was a rented car waiting for him on the parking lot of a supermarket a few stops away, dark blue, fast but not too expensive, nondescript.
It had a navigation system, but Petyr didn't need it. He knew where he was going – he'd spent some seven odd years of his childhood at that godforsaken place.
It didn't look the way he remembered it, but then again that wasn't much of a surprise.
When Petyr had been ushered through the gate by a sour-looking DCF-worker all those years ago, a battered backpack in hand that held all his belongings, his clothes threadbare and a little too big for him, the old mansion had looked grand. There had been a shiny new car standing on the driveway then, the hedges had been neatly trimmed, the lawn had looked like someone was about to hold a golfing tournament on it, and the old brick building had towered over the short, skinny boy like a castle from a fairy tale.
Now the iron-wrought gate looked rusty and brittle, the driveway was covered in rotting leaves, the hedges looked like nobody had cut them in several years and ivy was crawling up the bricks, already covering more than half of the façade. The car that stood in front of it looked so old it might have been the same car he'd seen back then, except Petyr knew for a fact Edmure had crashed that one when he was seventeen.
Only the wide river that wound its way across the grounds looked the same, just a far-off glimmer of reflected sunlight through the branches of the trees.
Riverrun Mansion had fallen apart almost as quickly as the family that had built it and lived in it for centuries, it seemed to him. Three of the five people who'd lived here when Petyr was young were dead now; one had disappeared off the face of the earth a year ago and the last one –
Petyr parked his car behind the battered old Ford, took a deep breath, got out of the car and straightened his tie, eying the little spyhole in the oaken front door nervously. He wasn't exactly looking forward to the part that came next, and he certainly wouldn't be greeted with any friendliness out here.
And sure enough, as soon as he rang the doorbell, the door was thrown open and he faced the last living inhabitant of the mansion – or mostly the barrel of a hunting crop.
"Piss off, Baelish."
Petyr almost didn't recognise him. The shock of red hair was greying in places, it looked unkempt and more than a little too long; he hadn't shaved and there was a stain on his shirt (a goddamned flannel shirt, surely even someone like Edmure Tully should consider that an unbearable loss of dignity). But most of all, his face looked hollow and pale, his blue eyes – Cat's eyes, Sansa's eyes – sat deep in their sockets and despite the hatred in his voice, they looked oddly blank and lifeless.
He took a deep breath and raised his hands very slowly. He was fairly sure if he made any sudden movements, Edmure would shoot him. "Well, thanks for the warm welcome, Tully, I've missed you too."
"I give you exactly sixty seconds to get back into that posh car of yours and get the fuck off my grounds."
He sighed. "Put the rifle away, Edmure, I've got a friend who needs your help."
"You don't have friends, Littlefinger," Edmure gave back drily, still aiming the shotgun at his chest.
Petyr supressed the urge to roll his eyes. Did Tully really think that he could still hurt him with that name? For Heaven's sake, he wasn't fifteen anymore, even Edmure had to notice that.
"Fine then. So you'll leave your only living relative to her fate?" he asked softly.
Edmure almost dropped his gun. "Sansa? You know where she is?"
Stating the obvious. Same old Edmure. "Yes, she's in my flat and she needs you. Will you help?"
The gun was back up. "What the hell's she doing at your place?"
"I can't say I feel like chatting while you're pointing a gun at me, Ed."
"You're telling your stories again, Littlefinger. I want to see her, I don't believe you."
He groaned. "Are you deaf? She's in the city, I'm not letting her anywhere near the line of fire. Put the gun away."
Edmure eyed him distrustfully while he put the gun into his usual place next to the door. "Why would you care?"
"I don't want to talk about personal relationships to a man who threatened to shoot me." He lowered his hands and straightened his jacket. "May I come in?"
Edmure glowered at him for a moment, clearly less than excited about the idea of Petyr setting foot inside his house, then he turned around without a word and walked towards the kitchen. Petyr closed the door behind himself – it gave a nasty creak – and followed him.
The kitchen looked just like it had all those years ago, the same white tiles, the same old oaken furniture, even the old stove was still the same. Petyr eyed it for a moment, and thought the bulky thing was probably a huge fire hazard. Unwashed dishes covered most of the surfaces, but all in all the place looked cleaner than he'd thought. He sat down on one of the chairs and only realised he'd chosen his old place in the corner when it was already too late.
"Tea?" Edmure asked gruffly, clearly expecting him to decline. Petyr threw him a smile.
"If you promise not to spit into my cup."
Edmure's stoic facial expression didn't change in the slightest. "What do you want?"
"Your help."
"Yeah, like that's gonna happen." Edmure put up the water boiler and sat down across him. "If you're here to make fun of me, go ahead. I'm immune by now, I think."
Petyr studied the man opposite, wondering how much had remained of the boy he'd grown up with. When they were teens, Ed and Petyr had come up with all kinds of little rebellions between the two of them – smoking his uncle's cigarettes, stealing his father's liquor, once they had stolen the Blackfish's old car, though they'd never got very far with it. Edmure had always had his head full petty little pranks, or else full of girls; there had been very little he ever took seriously, much to his father's dismay. But unsurprisingly, the laugh had vanished from his lips now.
Three months of Lannister captivity did that to you, Petyr supposed.
Whatever idiot had been in charge of guarding Edmure had thought it amusing to put up gallows in the yard and march his prisoner there day after day in handcuffs, making him stand there in the freezing cold all day with the noose around his neck, daring him to faint and choke.
When Jaime Lannister had heard of that, he had not been able to laugh about it either and had offered Edmure freedom and the lives of his young wife and his unborn child – in exchange for his late father's heritage, of course, notably the family company and fortune.
And if the murder of his sister and nephew at his own wedding, mere hours after he and his wife had left the reception, had not broken Edmure, the shame of that signature had.
Edmure Tully's thoughts were ruled by the dead, Petyr thought, the sister who'd died while Edmure lived and the father he had disappointed even more than he ever had when the old Tully had still been breathing. Something told Petyr that he thought of that noose when their ghosts came to haunt him, and wished they had hanged him.
But one thing remained true about Edmure Tully after all – he was neither especially smart nor especially brave, but he was stubborn to no end, and with all that stubbornness he clung to the words of their old family crest just like Cat always had.
Family, duty, honour. In that order, as old Hoster had used to say.
Edmure would continue to exist and endure his guilt and rip whatever remained of Hoster's legacy to shreds trying to save Roslin and the baby. Because they were all the family he had. And because it was his duty to protect his family. The honourable thing to do.
Family, duty, honour.
By betraying his family, it seemed, he'd become more like them than ever before.
And he was far too afraid to fail Roslin and the kid to refuse him. Oh, Sansa would probably rip Petyr's throat out if she found out he'd known all along where her uncle's family was and hadn't lifted a finger of his hand, but Edmure wouldn't touch him – he needed Petyr, and desperately so.
He didn't even know yet just how much he needed him.
"The Lannisters know Sansa is with me," he said softly while Edmure put up the tea. "Joffrey isn't exactly pleased. I need to hide her somewhere else. I thought perhaps you'd want to see your niece. She'd be happy to spend some time with family, I guess."
Edmure just looked at him, his blue eyes empty. "That's thoughtful, Littlefinger. What's in it for you?"
"Sooner or later, Joffrey is going to demand I let him see her. If I refuse him, I'm a dead man walking. I need to prevent that somehow."
"Why do you care what happens to her? Why don't you just give her to him?" Edmure asked in the same expressionless voice and placed a cup of tea in front of him. "Milk's gone sour."
"This place could need someone to look after it," Petyr said instead of answering and cast a look around the kitchen. "I'm sure she'd do that, if you ask nicely."
"Clearly you like her around. So why send her to me?" There was a touch of something like disgust in Edmure's voice, but he sounded too tired to even get worked up about it.
"Like I said, she needs a place to hide from the Lannisters, and someone to protect her."
"What about all those past months, didn't she need all that then?"
Petyr grimaced. "She's well capable of taking care of herself, but… not right now."
"You know I can't hide her," Edmure said after what felt like an eternity, his voice quiet and pained, and for the first time there was something like life flickering in his blue eyes. "If I help… if I go against them… I have a son that I've never seen in my life, Littlefinger, and I don't know what they'd do to him, and Roslin, I… I can't help Sansa, I'd love to, I'd love to take her away from you, believe me, but I have them to protect first of all. And Cersei would kill them, or worse. He's just a year old, and the girl I married has spent the last two years of her life a prisoner. I can't risk it. I can't."
Oh yes, he sounded desperate.
Petyr smiled and emptied his cup. "You know, Edmure, I'm not stupid. I know you don't offer people a one-sided deal. Help me save Cat's daughter… and I'll do what I can for your family."
Edmure gave a disbelieving snort. "And I'm just to take your word for that? So you'll do what you can? Fat chance."
"I can convince Cersei to free them," he replied with a shrug. "She trusts me a lot more than she should, and whenever I have a good idea she's more than happy to present it as her own. I can make her let them go. Give me a month and you'll have them back, so long as I have your word you'll help me in return."
He just stared at him, his eyes a little glassy, and Petyr knew he had him right where he needed him. "Why would you do this?"
"For love, for old time's sake? Call me sentimental. She might as well have been my daughter."
Edmure scoffed. "Yeah, right. You've always been so sentimental."
Petyr was almost surprised – when had Tully learned how to use sarcasm?
"What does it matter to you why I'm doing it, Edmure? I can bring your wife and son home to you, and your sister's only surviving child."
A humourless smile tugged at Edmure's lips. "You bastard. You knew all along where Roslin and the kid are, only you never told me because I had nothing you could want in return. That's disgusting, even by your standards."
Petyr just smiled back. "Do I have your word?"
"You killed my sister."
"Lysa's death was a tragedy and I had nothing to do with it," he answered in a tired voice, the same way he had for what felt like a million years. Sometimes he wondered if a lie came true if you just repeated it often enough – it sure enough almost felt like the truth to him by now.
"Do I have your word?"
"Bet you could've prevented Ned's death, too. If it wasn't even your idea."
Petyr didn't think it necessary to reply to that.
"And Lysa's kid, you're not gonna tell me that was an accident, are you?"
"I asked if I have your word, Tully," he repeated stoically.
Edmure looked about ready to jump across the table and strangle him. "Yes, of course you do," he finally spat, sounding like he was choking on the words even as he said them. "It's not like I have a choice. Proud of yourself, are you, Littlefinger?"
"When will you realise I've got the short end of this deal?" Petyr asked softly, shaking his head, and got to his feet. "I'll be in touch. Do as I tell you and this won't take very long."
Edmure just stared up at him, making no attempt to get up, disgust glimmering in his eyes. "How do you live with yourself?"
"Better than you do, anyway," Petyr gave back with a friendly smile. "Thank you for the tea."
Please take a moment to review.
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*A/N* I know my Edmure differs a lot from the one in the novel, but I kind of imagine him like that - after a while of "freedom" without his family, without Roslin, without his child. He'd be bitter. He'd be broken.
The title was taken from a song by Biffy Clyro called "Opposite" that I always understand the wrong way. He actually sings "take care of the ones that you love", but I kind of really like what my crappy hearing made of that line, it sounds so profound and mysterious ^^