-PART ONE-

"'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool'…
You see I think everything's terrible anyhow. Everybody thinks so – the most advanced people.
And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. Sophisticated – God, I'm sophisticated!"

SANSA

[four months to the election]

.

She wasn't sure if she would ever get used to this place.

The garden was so spectacularly devoid of plants that she sometimes wondered if it deserved the name at all, and yet there was a mesmerising, morbid beauty about the abyss at the far end of the lawn.

Something about the sparkling water of the sea a hundred feet below, about the winds that carried the taste of salt and sand and chalk up the cliff constantly beckoned her, called for her to try and see what it would be like-

Sansa couldn't remember a summer this hot in England, but her childhood was a blur of bittersweet, carefully stored-away memories and she wasn't sure if she could rely on these anymore. She knew there were many, many things her brain had simply erased to keep her sane, when her family had been gradually decimated to just one remaining member.

She'd got so good at pretending she'd forgot all about being the last that sometimes she could go for almost a day now before the pain caught up with her, and she was determined to believe that was some kind of progress.

She'd been in town a few days back, strolled the eerily quiet streets and listlessly gone through a couple of clothing shops, but even that had been dreadfully exhausting. The flimmering air over the concrete gave everything a surreal, dream-like feeling, like she was watching one of these old artsy movies where nothing much ever happened and everyone seemed brooding and apathetic and everything was awfully complicated and incredibly simple at the same time.

The heat that had engulfed the south of England two weeks ago didn't seem about to relent any time soon, and something about it had transformed Sansa into an entirely different person. All she wanted to do was lie in the shade or drift in the cool water of the pool; there was a lethargy and a carelessness to the world in the brightness and the heat of her days, and an infinite pretence and dizziness to her starry nights.

The sun had scorched the only bit of green in the garden, turned the lawn into a yellowish field with little spikes that crumbled underneath the soles of her feet when she made her way back to the terrace. The reflections of sunlight on the pool's surface drew strange patterns on Petyr's face and she wondered if his eyes behind the sunglasses looked greener in this light.

Unlike her, he seemed to thrive in the heat. The blinding sun lighted his stage whenever he appeared in the public, and Sansa never ceased to be amazed at how much trust he could spread while giving away so ridiculously little about himself. His ratings in the surveys went up with every month and there was no doubt anymore that Petyr Baelish was no longer just another upjumped MP, but actually very likely to win this election.

There certainly weren't many candidates who worked this hard to get there, and the longer she watched him, the more she believed he might actually deserve to win the race.

"How are you not yet in hospital because of a heatstroke?" she asked, sitting down on the edge of the pool, and dangled her bare legs in the cool water. A huge white straw hat protected her fair skin from most of the sunlight, but even with the shade it cast and with the loose, sleeveless dress she felt like someone had trapped her in a sauna.

Petyr wore the same dress shirt he'd worn to the office in the morning, the sleeve shoved up to the elbow, the same black trousers, the same black leather shoes. His sunglasses were his only acknowledgement of the scorching sun, and the missing tie his only concession to the fact he was at home. She'd never seen him in any less formal kind of clothing, and she doubted she ever would.

"Not all of us grew up on an ice cube," he replied without taking his eyes off the stack of print-outs in his hands, "and this really isn't the Sahara, love."

"It feels like the Sahara," she sighed theatrically and got to her feet. "I need a drink or I'll shrivel up and die, right now."

A smile twitched around his lips, but his eyes remained on his speech while he held up his empty glass. "I'll have one, too, please."

The cool stone floor inside was a relief. Back at home, there'd been heating to warm up the wooden floorboards… but that had been in another lifetime, another reality almost.

Petyr's house constantly felt like half a fantasy, like something her mind had dreamed up with the help of a bottle of Gin, or maybe one of Dany's pills back in Vegas - but Sansa was grateful it was nothing like home.

Everything here was new and shiny and cool, glass doors and grey carpets, black sheets and white walls, twice the amount of space the furniture called for and a fireplace that was so clean she doubted it had ever been used at all.

The Sansa of three years ago would have hated it here, but now she liked the vastness and the blunt simplicity of it all.

It helped her forget.

The ice cubes jingled in the glasses. Petyr hated it when there was a lot of ice in his drink ("I'm not about to pour half a pint of tap water into my scotch, sweetling, I know how much I paid for it"), but her drinks consisted of more ice than of actual alcohol these days – which was for the better, or she'd just be drunk for twelve hours a day.

God knew she had tried that, and if it hadn't been for Petyr, who knew where she might have ended up. Where Joffrey might have ended her up-

She caught sight of her face in the reflection on the kitchen cupboards, and instantly felt stupid. Deep and brooding isn't a good look on a chick, you literally can't be hot enough to pull it off, Joffrey had said, and that one time, he'd actually been right in a way.

The less she cared, the less people knew she cared, the less people thought she understood, the better off she was. Nobody ever saw past her beauty, and after everything she'd been through, maybe that was just as well.

Well, nobody ever saw past it – except for Petyr. Petyr could see her, he'd seen it all right away, seen that she wasn't weak, that she wasn't stupid, that she wasn't wasn't wasn't innocent, not anymore.

Everyone looked at her and saw red hair, blue eyes, long legs – Petyr saw all of her, for better and for worse.

Still, she thought and gripped her glass firmer, willing the cold ice to bring her back to reality, just because Petyr probably wasn't all in one piece himself didn't mean he wouldn't get bored with a moping, depressed girl eventually.

And she needed him. She had no one else.

Stop it now.

She carried the glasses outside and fished a cigarette out of the unopened package on a side table on her way out.

Petyr didn't smoke, and neither did she – the cigarettes were just part of the act. Half of the working class voters that Stannis Baratheon and even Arianne Martell never quite connected with still nursed a smoking habit, and so sometimes Petyr would stand at some construction site with a cigarette between his delicate fingers and chat about his father and his run-down neighbourhood and somehow pull the feat to look perfectly at home there despite his two-hundred pound leather shoes and his silver cufflinks.

Sansa, on the other hand, had learned to hide her sorrow behind a cloud of smoke, shielding her face from vision just long enough to wipe it off and adjust her smile, steady a shaking hand. She hated the taste of the nicotine, but it forced her to take slow, regular breaths, cleared her head, calmed her heartbeat.

"Will you come along tonight?" he asked, swirling the last remnant of the ice around in his glass.

It wasn't really a question; she knew there already was a hand-picked cocktail dress waiting for her on her bed.

"Charity gala, was it?" she asked and sat down on a sun lounger, blinking into the sunlight. "Who's hosting it?"

"Doran Martell. Don't worry, though… if his son makes an appearance, it promises to be quite the party. Oberyn never was very moderate."

Sansa smiled. Boredom was about the only thing she hadn't yet experienced at the upper class events he took her too.

She slowly exhaled the cigarette smoke, then asked without any real conviction: "Will you let me drive?"

He chuckled. "When you've been complaining about being drunk and getting a sunstroke all week? Some other time, sweetling."

"Fine." She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Petyr hardly let her touch his car anyway, and it was too hot to fuss.

He got up and plucked the cigarette from her fingers, his skin cool against her knuckles.

"You'll set the lawn on fire," he muttered and took a drag himself, watching her from behind his sunglasses. He was hard enough to read as it was, and with his grey-and-green eyes shielded completely from her view, there was no way for her to tell what he was thinking.

She would have rolled her eyes at him, but he was right.

There was a nerve-wracking sense of impending doom about everything these days; the slightest spark would suffice to set entire fields ablaze. In a way, Sansa liked the notion of annihilating the crops she could see from her window with their never-ending waving in the wind, always in motion and yet so passive. The drama, the finality of it seemed vaguely thrilling to her -

"It's a dangerous habit," she said instead, squinting up at him through the bright sunlight.

Petyr shrugged. "So is driving. What isn't a dangerous habit?" He took another drag from the cigarette and threw her a shrewd smile. "Do you mean to say I'm developing a smoking habit, dear, or were you talking about yourself?"

"Neither," she answered, throwing him an apologetic smile. Don't be so rude, Sansa. "I'm just saying we're living dangerously, smoking in this heat."

His smile turned a tiny bit dirty. "Well, and aren't you enjoying it?"

She laughed and stretched out on the lounger. "Just a little."

Petyr put out the cigarette in his empty glass, gathered his print-outs and shoved his sunglasses into his pocket. The grey in his eyes sparkled like polished silver in the sun. "It's a sixty minute drive to the Martells' from here. The gala's at eight."

"What time is it?" she asked languidly, adjusting her sunhat.

"Four thirty." That smile was still on his lips. "Come inside, you'll get a sunburn."

She'd learned to see through phrases like that. This one was actually more of an invitation than a request, though, and she felt so heavy and immobile she decided she could refuse it.

"I thought you wanted to finish your speech."

His grin turned a little rueful, but somehow it didn't look any less dirty. "Mh. Did I say that?"

His fingers travelled along her collarbone, stroking a strand of copper hair that had escaped her braid behind her shoulder.

"You did," she whispered with half a smile and pushed herself up just enough to meet his lips. It was a chaste kiss for both their standards – it was too hot to move, too hot to get excited; and he had a speech to finish and no matter what he said, Petyr would never put his work off, not even for her.

He got to his feet and stepped through the garden door, then called from somewhere inside the house: "We leave at quarter to six, Sansa."

"I know."

.

There was a dress on her bed, and like all the others she'd worn to his parties, it was an exquisite, lavish bit of fashion that fit as if it had been made especially for her (she wouldn't put it past Petyr to actually have them tailored). This one was of a blue so dark she had to put it next to a black dress to determine the colour. It had a fairly simple off-the-shoulder top with a skirt that fell to her shins in countless layers of chiffon, and it weighed next to nothing.

Once again, she couldn't help but be impressed with his impeccable taste, and forgot that she could have bought a dress for herself.

He turned up as she was doing her make-up, leaned against the open doorway and watched her with his sharp grey eyes, the hint of an insinuating smile playing around his lips. He was already dressed, had swapped his white shirt for a pale blue one and put on a more expensive pair of shoes, that was to say – except for the tie that hung around his neck. It didn't look like he remembered he'd only tied it halfway.

She supressed a smile at the sight of it – smiling would ruin her lip line. It was a pleasure to see the influence she had over him for a change, to see she could mess with his head, too.

Or maybe he just wanted her to think that.

Petyr had bought her the bloody red lipstick, and he seemed very pleased with that investment every time she wore it (even though she was sure it had ruined at least one of his shirts).

With a last glance into the mirror, she slipped into the dress and pushed her hair over her shoulder. "Zip me up, please?"

He took his time to fulfil her request, and his fingers wandered up her back slowly before the zipper was closed, sending little shivers up her spine that put a decidedly too smug smile on his lips. Finally, his hands came to rest on her hips and he looked at her reflection in the mirror.

"Do you like your dress, sweetling?"

"I'm paralysed with happiness," she replied with a bright smile, and he laughed and pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder.

"Music to my ears." His lips wandered up her chin.

"You'll ruin my make-up," she said, turning in his arms to face him instead of really resisting, though.

"Redo it in the car." His lips met hers and his hand tangled in her braid, pulling her closer.

"And my hair," she whispered breathlessly, but he just buried his fingers deeper, his body pushing her backwards into the cold mirror.

"It's a long drive," he muttered against her lips with a smirk.

"We'll be late," she argued feebly. Her skirt was travelling up her leg and the fingers of his free hand brushed across her thigh almost accidentally, making her forget whatever she'd wanted to say next.

"We'll make an entrance."

She leaned into his touch with a smile and focused her attention on discarding of all those annoying layers of fabric between them with impatience – her lipstick was ruined anyway, and it wasn't like she cared about when they'd get there. If her night consisted of nothing but this, she would mind that one bit, either.

Please take a moment to review.

*A/N* There was actually supposed to be another part to this where they're actually AT the party, but then I decided I liked to only see these two party from an outside observer's point of view (which is totally not a really lazy excuse for not writing it) but it IS more in the style of Gatsby so oh well. I can live with it.

Otherwise, this chapter is probably the one where I *subtly* implemented my theme (yeah, I'm totally rubbing it in your face - there are like two or three actual quotes from the book in here. I'm not even sorry.)