Petyr didn't push for anything last night, but Sansa knows it's coming. Getting her away and helping her disguise herself, putting her in a hideyhole and making it clear that it wasn't for Mum's sake - even that little bit of money for a coffee with Mya and Randa last night, it all means the same thing.
No bra left with her clothes this morning. Funny that the one she left tucked into her boot last night is missing, too. Instead, she has a breezy silk-chiffon blouse that ties at the neck but buttons lower than she'd ever wear, and tight, tight high-waisted trousers of the sort that zip in the back and lift in the bum.
It's all a bit… sexier than she's ever worn, and it would feel kind of over the top even if there was a bra. Even Joff hadn't liked her to dress this way - he'd preferred elegant dresses, and as the cigarettes had burned further and further down her thighs, her skirts had become longer, the better to keep up their perfect veneer.
Sansa was always so good at playing the princess-to-be. She's always been good at that sort of thing. The long skirts became a trend, along with the capelets on her ballgowns to hide the scars on her back and the bruises on her arms. She'd even made surgical masks a thing for a couple of months last autumn, mercifully during flu season. Everyone had bought her excuse of having a bad flu, and the mask had hidden the worst of the bruising and the split lip.
Joff paid for a private surgeon to come in from Lys to make sure her nose looked the same as it had before he broke it, and he hadn't hit her in the face again.
But this? This is moulding. Not the way Joff shaped her, because despite his endless faults Joff was always smart enough to take the parts of her he liked best and put them at the forefront, to push the bits of her he hated aside with his belt. Joff had liked that she was a little different to all the other girls in their circle in King's Landing, because it made her one more rare, precious thing for him to own.
Petyr doesn't seem to really like anything about her.
Sansa recognises the vague outline of Mum at college in what Petyr's given her to wear. Oh, the lack of bra is a change, and everything's tighter and lower cut, but Mum is still there in all of it. Even the glasses he bought her, big old-fashioned frames with plain glass, just to hide her face a little, they're the same as the awful old things Mum used to wear before she started going out with Dad.
Petyr hates that she dyed her hair. He was the one who bought her the hair dye, but he's complained about it every hour, on the hour, since then, and Sansa knows that he's envisioning her dressed like this, but with her own hair. Mum's hair.
He has to "go out on business," a little after ten, and Sansa decides that she's going to risk running into his friends - his guards, she isn't stupid - and nip out to that coffee shop. It was just around the corner, after all, a tiny little place, with old fashioned square-paned windows and panelled walls, all in beautiful shades of powder blue and off white, and she finds it easily enough, wrapped up in the sleek black trench Petyr left on the coatstand - whether to look more normal to his friends, or as a dare to her, she doesn't know.
There are tiny little birds etched into the windows, she notices, what initially look like swallows but which she thinks might just be falcons - falcons, paired with all that blue… Is this Robin's place? He owns a cafe like this under the Eyrie, and one in Winterfell, and there's two in Gulltown-
If this is Robin's place, will she be found? Does she want to be found, or does she want to risk Petyr's heavy gaze for the sake of obscurity?
She opens the door and steps inside. If anyone is going to find her, it's Joffrey, not little cousin Robin. Joff has the whole secret service at his disposal, from the elite of the Kingsguard all the way down to the grubbiest of Minister Varys' informants, and if he wants to find her he will.
She wonders who he'll send for her. One of the Cleganes, probably, and if that's the case then she hopes for the Hound instead of the Mountain. Best case, he sends his uncle, but that seems unlikely. Jaime Lannister is many things, but he's not a bully just for the sake of it, and he's not blind to Joff's true nature. Sansa hasn't been ignorant to the way Joff behaves just a little better when his uncles are nearby. He wouldn't trust Jaime to be cruel to her, even under direct order.
The girl behind the counter has a sharp nose and bright golden-hazel eyes, like a hawk's, and the most fantastically lush brown hair tied back in a high stacked braid.
"Welcome to the Falcon's Rest," she says. "What can I do for you?"
Her name tag reads Ysilla, which sets something itching in the back of Sansa's mind - but there's no spark of recognition beyond the vague smile, and Sansa decides she's safe. For now.
She selects a lemon muffin and lemon pancakes, to go with her sharply sweet hazelnut latte, and ponders just what she'll do if Joff finds her first. The easiest thing would be to take the beating and go back to the half-life she's been living, to find her engagement ring and pretend to be grateful to him for rescuing her from Petyr's abduction.
The hardest thing would be to face him down and get away. To run home to Winterfell and brace herself against him, using - and this makes her feel sick to even consider - Dad's death as a shield against public outcry.
Somewhere in the middle is the option of throwing herself off the balcony of his seventh floor apartment, looking out over the Blackwater Rush. That would work. That would guarantee he could never get his hands on her again. It would also break whatever of Mum's heart is intact after losing Dad, though, so Sansa sets it neatly aside for now. That'll be Plan Z, for absolutely desperate times.
Given Joff, she can't entirely discount it.
She has just enough left out of the money Petyr gave her to buy a coffee to bring with her, once she's finished her lunch, and it's because she's sipping on that that she almost runs into the woman in the doorway - tall, slim, handsome, with choppy dark hair and laughing eyes of a bright blue-grey.
"Well hello," the woman says, in the husky sort of voice that makes Sansa think she might be a heavy smoker. "Come here often?"
"I- uh-"
She bows and cedes territory to Sansa, holding the door like a gentleman and winking like a rogue.
Sansa steps through. There isn't much else she can do, especially when the handsome woman looks so familiar, and is watching Sansa as if she looks familiar, too.
Rodge crashes through the front door like a man possessed, almost knocking Loras down as he comes - Loras steadies him, steers him back toward the kitchen, and pauses.
"I'll see what they're saying up on the Hill," he says, drumming his fingertips on the door. "Hopefully it isn't much."
Loras is dressed in his Honourable Mr. Loras Tyrell clothes today, an elegant, slim-cut suit in a bright buff colour over a dark green paisley shirt and polished tan brogues, and with his hair combed and set that way you'd never recognise him as the greasy, headbanded madman in sweaty whites from the tennis court. Today, he's not Lucky Loras. Today, he's the King's brother-in-law, just precisely ordered enough that Willas can focus on him.
"The less they have to say about her, the better," Loras reminds him - he must have given himself away, too antsy for news of Sansa to think clearly about just how terrible it might be for the Hill, the royal family, to know where Sansa is before they do. "I've training after, but Renly'll try and drop over with any rumours and hearsay we picked up."
"We might not need any of that," Rodge says, clearly bursting with whatever it is he's heard. "That's why I'm here, Will, we have word."
Willas goes very still. So does Loras. So does Arya Stark, just coming down the stairs into the hall.
"Our Asha," Rodge says, leaning down to take Willas by the shoulders, talking directly into his face. "She saw Sansa this morning - down the Falcon's Rest, that coffee shop of Robin Arryn's on Fishmonger's Lane."
Arya thumps him hard in the shoulder - hard enough that he looks away from Rodge, meeting the hard steel-grey of her 're the same shape as Sansa's, and she has the same long jaw and long, straight nose, but that's where the similarities end. Willas is glad - looking at Robb would probably make him cry with the way he is just now.
" Cousin Robin," she says pointedly, "just called me. Ysilla in the Rest sent him pictures of Sansa eating her weight in lemon-flavoured breakfast."
Arya turns her phone around, and sure enough, it's Sansa. The hair and the glasses are wrong, but Willas would know her face anywhere, even in shit quality Snapchat screenshots.
The worst thing about being Awake for all of this shit - and Arya always is, for the worst of it - is knowing what needs to be done, but not being able to do it.
The only thing, the absolute only thing keeping her here in Willas Tyrell's irritatingly lovely house, which Sansa will adore if she gets to see it, is Alla's constant refrain of think of your poor mum, Arya. Alla's a bitch for a well-intentioned guilt trip, and Arya never has the heart to tell her no, anyway.
Arya's done an awful lot of thinking about Mum in the past two-and-a-half days. About the way Mum's legs had gone from under her when Vayon Poole came into the sitting room with tears on his face, and that horrible scream she'd let out while he'd choked the words together. They'd all been at home, for some reason, all of them except Sansa, and Robb had had to pull Mum's hands away from her face to stop her from hurting herself.
Arya thinks - and Robb agrees, even if Bran is less certain - that they ought to wake Mum and Rickon. Rickon's an easy target, really, waking up the first time he and Bran are left alone in Winterfell after Dad dies, but Mum is less certain. They can never seem to wake her up by choice, always having to deal with the fallout of her waking herself up by chance.
The time before last had been the worst. First Dad, then Robb, then Sansa. Mum had taken up arms herself for the first time in all of Arya's memories, the time before last.
This time will probably be different. Arya just hopes they can get Sansa home before Mum wakes up, because otherwise there'll be hell to pay. Especially if Mum finally realises that Robb's born Awake.
"Listen," Robin says, wrapped in clingfilm all up his right arm and wearing one of his fashionable short-sleeved shirts. Robin's always been the nattiest dresser in the entire family, from what Arya can remember of him, but he's really taking the biscuit this time around. He's got mousse in his hair. Might as well change his family arms to a peacock, at this rate.
Still, he looks good. Not ducal, really, he's too young for that just yet, but sharp and kind of cool, even if it goes against every big cousin instinct Arya possess to admit that. Whatever medicine they have for him this time around is really working - he hasn't had a single seizure since they were kids.
"Listen, we need to strike now. Right now. We need to get her away from him as soon as is humanly possible."
He's sitting at Tyrell's beautiful dining table, the one upstairs in the house proper, in the dining room overlooking the back garden - Sansa will love this, if she's well enough to see it when they find her. If she falls in love with Tyrell, when they find her.
Also at the table is Tyrell, flanked by the brother at his right shoulder and the sister at his left. The eldest Greyjoy, the one that's in love with Tyrell, is sitting with his leg flung over the arm of his chair, his sister mirroring him in the next seat.
Theon, who Arya still sometimes hates, is sitting beside her on the antique dresser tucked against the wall behind the door. He likes sitting back and watching just as much as Arya does, although in his case it's more from learned fear than innate caution.
Neddie and Trys are here as well, buried in their tablets with their phones chirping so often Arya would throw them - and their phones - out the window if they were in any other circumstances. They're tossing whispers back and forth with Ty Martell, Trys' cousin, and catching all kinds of nasty glares from Robb, who arrived by fast train half an hour ago and still has creases on his cheek from using his coat as a pillow.
Arya balances on her hands and, with one foot pressed against the dresser door, she manages to kick the back of his chair.
"Play nice," she warns him. "They're helping."
"I'm always nice," Robb grumbles. "That's my whole thing. "
"And here we thought you were a fiery young revolutionary, Stark," Asha Greyjoy says, so dry she makes Theon sound like even more of a wet blanket than usual.
"Kindness is a revolution of its own," Robb says, so earnestly that even Arya doesn't dare laugh for a heartbeat. It's what they really needed to break the agonising tension, though, and even Tyrell's shoulders drop down from his ears.
"Alright," Trys says, and Arya notices the way Robin curls in on himself now that the conversation has moved on as though he hadn't said a word. He's always been a little shy, and because he was sick when they were kids he'd always been on the sidelines. Now, though, he's got something useful to say, and Arya won't stand to see anything that might help Sansa ignored. Not this time. "Well, here's what we found-"
"Robin was speaking, Trystane," she cuts in coolly. "Why do we need to get her out so urgently, Robin? I know Baelish is a pustule on the face of Westeros, but-"
"He's obsessed with Sansa," Robin says. "And I- I can't be sure, but I think he's born Awake. He's obsessed with Aunty Cat, and because she never, ever gives him the time of day, he's obsessed with getting a, a do-over? I suppose? With Sansa."
Tyrell's gone all pale under that pretty Reacher tan of his. Margaery, who Sansa always trusts before she trusts anyone else with what Joffrey does to her, looks sick.
Seems like Sansa hasn't trusted Margaery with this. She certainly never explained it like this to Arya. Tyrell doesn't look as much like a slapped arse as Margaery does, so he obviously knew this. It makes sense, Arya supposes, that Sansa would trust her over-and-over again husband with the whole truth. The only people Arya's ever trusted with her truth are Ned, back in the homophobic ol' days when everyone needed a beard, and Alla.
"Please," Robin says. "You have to understand - this isn't just about power or money or any of the rest of it for him. Well, it is about that, but he always- I know him better than any of you. This is the very first time he's gotten his hands on Sansa without marrying my mother first, and the time before last-"
"Don't," Tyrell says. "Robin, please-"
"Sansa died because she wouldn't play along with his plan," Robin says. "He usually kills me before I have any power to stop him, and this time it's just not the same. Being Duke of Arryn isn't much fucking use if I can't act against the lords nominally under my control."
Robb's fingers are drumming hard on the table top. Arya can't really blame him.
"Sansa died," Tyrell says, "because she was married to a fucking madman."
He looks genuinely ill. He really, truly looks sick with guilt.
"That isn't what happened, and you'd know if any of you actually asked her about it," Robin snaps. "Or ask me. I was there for all of it. I'm the only one of all of us who saw her die, so I'm the only one of us who gets to decide whether or not we talk about it."
That shuts everyone up. Even Ned and Trys take their noses out of their screens for a moment, which basically never happens.
"We need," Robin says, through gritted teeth, "to get her out now. "
"Maybe I can help," Jon says. He's clearly just arrived, because Jon more than any of them took his etiquette lessons seriously, and he would never have left his coat on if he was in the house longer than five minutes. "I'm not as, ah, obvious as the rest of you. Might be that I can get close enough to leave her a message. Sansa knows she can trust me."
"Jon, come on-"
Robb's chest is getting all puffed up. No matter how close he and Jon are, Robb still gets a little jealous when Jon is brotherly to any of them. He calls it the perks of living to old age, as if that's a guarantee for Jon. The only one of the six of them who sees old age every time is Rickon.
"I've been giving Sansa safe haven from Joff since she moved to King's Landing for college," Jon says calmly, yes, shrugging out of his coat and folding it neatly over his arm. "This isn't a you or a me thing, Robb. This is about doing what's best for Sansa, and what's best for Sansa is to get her away from Baelish as soon as possible. Robin's absolutely correct about that."
Oh, shit. How many times has Jon been the one to get Sansa out from whatever nightmare Baelish has trapped her in? Of course he's siding with Robin on this one.
Mya arrives on her own, knocking on the door and leaning nonchalantly against the opposite wall when Sansa answers.
"Gear up, Alayne," she says. "We're going for coffee."
Sansa has had more coffee in the past two days than in the previous two years. She's never been a coffee drinker - Joff always discouraged it in case it stained her teeth. Same with red wine, and cigarettes. She's discovering a liking for it, though. She's having trouble eating, aside from all that breakfast this morning, and the coffee is helping her power through.
"Okay," she says, "but I'm broke."
"Just grab your coat, girl," Mya says, rolling her eyes. "Trust me, I can afford whatever sugary shit you want to try this time."
Sansa grabs her coat. She found a bra while Petyr was still out, but not her phone or her purse or any of her things.
Mya waits patiently. She knocks her shoulder against Sansa's as they walk down the stairs to street level. Sansa hates the lift - it reminds her too much of Joff's mirrored dressing room, which locks from the outside - and she wonders if Mya noticed that, or if she's just as athletic as she looks.
"I was wondering," Mya says, once they're outdoors and just out of easy view of the goons who sit in a car directly outside Petyr's building in four hour shifts, "if you knew that you'd missed a few patches when you dyed your hair. You'll need to do it again if you want to keep the red hidden properly."
No. No no no-
"Don't fret," Mya says. "I'm not going to rat you out. I'm not going to make any assumptions. Given half of my half-siblings have turned up dead in the past two days, I'm the very last person who's going to run up the Hill telling tales."
"Your half- why?"
"He really has been keeping you shut off," Mya says, frowning. "My useless father is dead, Alayne, and the new King has control of the secret service - which means they're at his mother's disposal. She isn't going to accept even illegitimate competition for her devil spawn."
King Robert dead. First Uncle Jon, then the King, and Dad-
Why does that feel so familiar?
"The twins were only little kids," Mya says. "And if Cersei Lannister is willing to do that to babies like them just for existing, what's our handsome new king going to do to you for hiding?"
"Mya, I-"
"I know all of this," Mya says, "not because any of their mothers told me. There are plenty of us, and we don't keep in touch properly. But I'm the oldest. I know how many of us there are, and I know who everyone is. The Spider makes sure of it."
But if Lord Varys told Mya, then he must have cleared her to tell Sansa, which means he knows where Sansa is-
Shadric. The spiderwebs. Sansa's going to be sick. Lord Varys reports every single thing to the Lord Privy Seal, and since Uncle Jon died, Dad's taken on those duties as Prime Minister.
But with Dad dead, the Lord Chancellor is next in line. And the Lord Chancellor is Joff's grandfather.
Mya holds open the door of the Falcon's Rest.
"After you," she says. "We have a lot to talk about, so pick a comfortable table."
Sansa picks the half-width booth right at the back, as far away from the two overdressed teenagers with all the phones as possible. Mya is laughing with the pretty girl behind the counter from earlier - Ysabel? No, Ysilla, that's what her nametag read - but she isn't long about ordering their drinks and a slice of cake. Two forks.
"Here," she says, passing over a cappuccino cup overflowing with cream. "Hot chocolate with hazelnut syrup. It'll help settle your nerves. You look like you're about to faint."
Sansa obediently sips her hot chocolate. It's sweet enough that she can feel it sticking to the roof of her mouth right away.
"I'm not here to sell you out, if that's what you're thinking," Mya promises her. "Even before that bitch went after the kids, I hated her. I hate them - well, most of 'em. I just need you to understand that the Spider isn't going to sell you out either. You have a lot of enemies in this, but he isn't one of them."
Petyr is. But Petyr saved her. But Petyr took away her bras. But Petyr's helping her hide from Joff. But Petyr won't let her contact Mum.
Has he touched you yet?
"Why?" Sansa asks. "If you're telling the truth - and I don't know that you are - why would he help me?"
"He respected your father," Mya says, which makes Sansa laugh. No one in King's Landing liked Dad very much because he was impossible to bribe, and fewer still people respected him. He was too direct, too straight-forward, for the stupid power games played at court and in parliament. "I'm serious - he might live in the shadows, but he admired your father for refusing to do the same. More people than you realise admired your old man."
Sansa doesn't believe that, but what does she know? Nothing, if Joff's to be believed, about anything.
"I get wanting to stay with Littlefinger," Mya says, sipping her own drink - coffee, black, with a lot of brown sugar. "I hear he's your brother's godfather. He grew up with your mum. I understand that. Just be careful that he's not expecting a fee."
Has he touched you yet?
"If I believed you," Sansa says, stabbing the thin end of the slice of cake with her fork. "Say I believed you. What does that mean for me?"
"Arya? Trys. It's definitely her."
"Did you talk to her?"
"She was with someone. Ned's sending some pics as we speak."
"How'd she look?"
"As if she hadn't slept in days," Trys admits. " But she likely hasn't, so that's to be expected. Well, though. I don't think anyone's laid a finger on her."
Alla's phone bleeps, and she makes a funny little noise when she opens the message.
Arya looks.
"Trystane," she says. "You're so smart. How are you so stupid?"
If Renly was a woman, he'd look just like the woman in Neddie's photos. Why in the world is Sansa having coffee with some distant Baratheon cousin?
"I'll show them to Renly," Alla whispers. "He came in about half an hour ago - I think he's downstairs with Margaery."
Arya offers up her cheek for a kiss while Trys explains that he's calling instead of Neddie because Neddie is trailing Sansa back to whatever hideyhole Littlefinger has her hidden in.
Maybe - just maybe - they can get to Sansa before everything goes entirely to shit. Maybe.
Trys signs off with something succinct in Dornish that Arya can't quite catch, and she sighs. It's so easy to feel older than they are, with all the history weighing them down, but they're not old. Sansa is just gone twenty-six. Arya is twenty-three in a month. Even Robb isn't thirty yet.
Even that's older than Robb's ever been. Gods. What a mess.
Robb is downstairs with Margaery Tyrell, too, talking about therapists and cosmetic surgeons, for all the scars Margaery says Sansa has all over her back and her legs. Arya knew there was harm done, but she had no idea of the scale. She understands why Sansa didn't tell her - no guarantee that she wouldn't rat that shithead out to Dad, who probably would have committed Crown Prince-icide had he known - but it still stings, to know that Margaery Tyrell knows more about Sansa on this turn of the wheel than Arya does.
"Right then," she says out loud, just to snap herself out of it. She has to share Trys and Neddie's findings with Robb, and send him off on the overnight train so he can try and wake Mum up.
Then, maybe, they can set Mum loose on Littlefinger. That would be a sight.
"This isn't a cousin," Renly is saying, when Alla pushes into the dining room, shaking her phone in Marg's face. "This is my niece. Robert's eldest daughter. He's got… Oh, I don't know how many. He's never really understood protection. It's amazing that Cersei had a chance to murder him, really, before whatever concoction of STDs he's collected got him."
"Why would one of your brother's children not turn Sansa in immediately?" Robb asks. "Wouldn't they all want to get in cushy with their kingly brother?"
Arya imagines Gendry, who in this world is making probably the coolest jewellery she's ever seen, cosying up with Joffrey Wormlips. She just can't see it.
Renly takes an old-fashioned fold out photo wallet from the pocket of his jacket, where it's hanging on the back of a chair. He folds it out fully, and then picks up a whiteboard marker from the table and starts putting thick black X's through some of the photos. He turns it over and repeats the process on the back.
"The ones who have survived Robert by longer than three days," he says, "will barely take a call from me, and I'm the one who pays their child support and sends them birthday cards. What in the gods' names makes you think they'd want anything to do with the son of the woman who murdered half of their brothers and sisters?"
Well, shit.