Do not show me how to restrain myself,

you evil, innocent temptress.

~MTC, 62216

ROOSE Bolton eyed her. This material of beauty which is Sansa Stark.

The day was untreated with light, and when was it ever not? Winter has come. Weeny snowflakes trickled, melting on their hair, settling on their shoulders. Skies were dull and grievous. Daytime was only a line away from night, and yet made everything seem sleepless. He himself was sleepless, given by the added crumples on the edges of his light grey eyes, and the much darker shade beneath them. His face, hard from skin to beard to thin whiting hair, met her with critical interest.

He heard stories of this Stark girl: how she was, once upon a time, engaged to the late Joffrey Baratheon, casted aside to be wed to the Lannister imp, and conspired to poison the boy king on his wedding day. She was said to have transformed into a she-wolf and ran off, leaving her dwarf husband to the inquest and judgement. She was said to be a witch, a devil's bride, the Stranger's lover. She was rumoured to keeping her father's severed head, and every night creeps out with it and with seven dim candles under the Godswood, witnesses hear Ned's voice draw from his purpling lifeless lips, feeding her venomous thoughts of bringing his death into justice. She had become a girl of many stories, but stories are for the gullible, and he wasn't about to digest stupid peasant lies.

She is, he confesses, such a sweet sight. In the crisp chilly air, he can feel her warmth pulsate. Among the Winterfell walls, she looks like summer, she is a ray of sunshine. For a girl in her middle teens, Sansa Stark resembles more of a grown woman: her eyes were inquisitive, her skin cut from pearls, her chest a pleasant convex, her figure eye-catching even when covered with leatherette travelling gown. He found his young self nursing a little desire for this budding rose, which, of course, is impossible as he is married to fat Walda Frey, and this budding rose is to be wed to his bastard.

A tense exhale emanated beside him. He angled his head, sure to face a despaired, angry son whose head was bowed. The boy is particularly unhappy of this arrangement, Roose sensed, when was the bastard ever happy aside from peeling people alive?

The last of the Vale men entered the castle gates, gallops of their horses ceasing, neighs quieted by stable men and knights alike. More men drew in, more of their thin foggy breaths blurring the view of the main guests.

Roose walked in the same bleak steps he was recognized, having neither propensity nor grace to smile. His eyes, dull and sombre as they were, searched the Stark girl. He recognized she wasn't wearing a hood, that the black on her head wasn't any cloth, but the braids of her hair instead. There started a doubt in his mind if he was fooled by the Littlefinger, for he heard that Sansa Stark was a rebirth of a Tully: red hair and blue eyes. She was supposed to have autumn hair, and he was looking at a girl with night shade locks.

Petyr Baelish appeared beside Sansa, his gloved hand on her back, guiding her towards Bolton. Roose had always seen the Littlefinger as a sly, roguish cunt. He had liking on questioning Littlefinger's every stroke. Nevertheless he was the only cunt he could trust to bring the girl alive. Despite the uncertainty of Sansa and her dark hair, Roose drew breath and decided to welcome them instead.

"Lady Sansa," he went on, "welcome."

His voice was crude. He felt her shy away in hesitation, playing with her pinkish-tipped fingers to keep them warm. But she looked at him with which he perceives as venom in those blue eyes, labelling him. Why wouldn't she? This man has turned on her kin, voluntarily engaged in butchering them at the Red Wedding. He half expected she would grow fangs and dig them onto his neck.

Suddenly her face changed, as if by spell, and smiled. Reaching out to her skirt and bending her right knee, she curtsied, "Lord Bolton."

It lifted the mood, and Roose loosed his curled fist, let out himself a crooked half-smile. He stepped aside to make way, "May I introduce my son, Ramsay Bolton."

In the midst of the sky starting to break light, he waited for Ramsay to immediately knock past him and take the girl by the face to kiss her. Roose has always noted the boy's unquenchable hunger for women, and with the Stark girl far more desirable than the low born whores he fed and fucked, there is no reason to keep his hands to himself.

Yet, he saw a strange revolt in Ramsay's face. It was pale, as if hit by blizzard. His lips were agape as if devoid of words. And his eyes were new to take sight of. The blue in them was suddenly drained, turning them into almost grey pools which no words nor painting can match. Roose has never seen his bastard this aghast, and it was unusual. Is Ramsay's taste in women this bizarre, Roose thought, to disapprove of the likes of Sansa Stark and be satisfied with prole bitches in brothels?

Ramsay looked at him briefly with eyes in quandary, as if he was called to be whipped in the naked bottom. It was more than a decade ago when he was last punished over a deed Roose couldn't remember, and this time he sees that boy again. Afraid. Hysterical. Haunted.

Roose had to furrow brows to remind Ramsay of his supposed act, and the boy seemed to grasp the point.

He watched his son move forward, releasing his right hand from the glove that engulfed it, and stretched it out to Sansa Stark. Roose noted the slight vigor that went back to Ramsay's face at the touch of her skin.

"It's an honor to meet you," Ramsay managed his low, steady voice, "my lady." He met his lips on the back of her hand.

Childish. Roose found himself scoffing. Ramsay has always been childish. His erratic ways of redemption wasn't all the time favorable. Roose would sometimes look at Ramsay, the boy ignited with mood swings and untamed craving for hunt, and shake his head trying to decipher how he had managed to father this whelp. He had minimal liking on the way Ramsay would treat captives of looting. Skinless carcass was one of the last things Roose would want to see, despite it being their banner, and Ramsay has always gifted him with those. Once he branded his son a lunatic, and twice he attempted to put him in chains for feeding babes to his wild, devil dogs, and more than thrice he wanted to bring back the Snow in the bastard's last name instead of his own. It wasn't a surprise to him anymore on questioning why he ever naturalized the boy in the first place. It seemed that turning him into a Bolton has made him lose half his brain. If not for the need to make pact with house Arryn, he would have just let Ramsay live a bachelor. He would never deserve a lady for a wife.

Now he looked at Sansa, sweet and sinless, and virgin. He could imagine the joy of his son, insane to taste her blood on their wedding night. He would want to see the last picture of her smiling, for he knew he will never see her that way again.

He made sure Sansa Stark will be treated well, a notion truly awkward given that he once drove a dagger through her brother's heart. Will this be a kind of atonement to his guilt, he wasn't ready to accept. The least he can do is have the best of comfort for the Stark girl before handing her to Ramsay.

Roose walked through the narrow staircase leading to the mezzanine, a note in his hand and apprehension in his face. Dark wings, dark words. He knew. The raven received was from King's Landing, hand written by Queen Cersei herself, addressed to Petyr Baelish. Without second thoughts he broke the queen's seal before handing the parchment to Littlefinger.

He did find Petyr in the balcony, and with Ramsay. Their dirtied, hooded capes faced him, unknown of his presence. Both were looking down, with Ramsay's fingers around the surface of the wooden railings. Roose craned his neck to see the view his son and Littlefinger were paying attention to. There was nothing special there at first, with only men pulling wagons here and there, a host of lumber, bricks, crops, venison. Men hammering and drilling and putting up rafters. And then he sighted Sansa Stark passing, her white face very evident against the dull. Her cape flowing as to her comely movements. Her splendidness undeserving of the mess he made of Winterfell.

"She is so lovely..."

Roose Bolton immersed on Ramsay's words and felt no shame in eavesdropping. Again there was the tinge of melancholia in his voice. It was obscure for Ramsay to have such murkiness, having been known for his maniac, violent stature. This was new. Very, very new to have seen and heard the boy speak this way. Roose would have described him anxious, glum, and...sad.

Ramsay broke in a slow exhale, his face an alloy of contrasting want and restraint, eyes still down to the void where Sansa Stark once stood. He finished his sentence.

"...do I even deserve her?"