“What are you reading, Sophie?” Caitey was standing at the bottom of the tree her sister liked to climb in order to spend time with her books. It was the first time she’d been able to go into the woods since Tyrion grounded her for her antics at the feast, and she was savoring her solitary freedom.

“Stories you wouldn’t be interested in,” Sophie mumbled in reply. The last thing she wanted was to be bothered by her little sister at the moment, but she knew well that Caitey could be fairly persistent.

“Why not?” the smaller girl queried.

“Because they are about wars and the like,” Sophie exhaled, somewhat haughtily.

“Oh.” Caitey was quiet for a moment, then asked quietly, “Can I climb up with you?”

“You know better than to ask that! You know you can’t climb.”

“Then can’t you read down here? If you read me some of your book, maybe I could learn to like it…”

“Caitey!” she blurted. “Don’t you understand? I want to be alone with my book, thank you very much.”

Caitey winced a little and stepped back. “If…when you come down…would you like me to draw you? I could draw you, Sophie.”

“Why don’t you go draw Mother?”

“She told me to go find you.”

Sophie groaned. “Well, maybe I’m busy too, see?”

Caitey looked down dejectedly. “Alright. Will…I see you inside? I wanted to show you my sketch book…”

“We’ll see,” Sophie mumbled, getting further absorbed in her reading until she finally heard her sister scuffle away.

When she was done reading the last chapter of her book, she clambered down from the tree at last. At the bottom, she found herself a stick, just long and light enough for her to handle. She had learned the moves well, placing her hands adroitly on either side of the stick, and swinging it about in circles, then going into thrusts and parries, bobbing and weaving in a dance as she imagined the sound of metal clanging against metal, and enjoying the sound of the wind being sliced…

Thwak.

Her heart jumped as the stick met an obstacle which slit it in two. She looked up to find a long slender sword drawn outwards, the hilt grasped in the hand of a stranger.

“Wood and metal make for poor foes, and even poorer lovers,” the man offered. “The one makes a conquest of the other far too easily. Steel is meant to marry steel alone.”

The man was very well-dressed, had a small moustache and a sleek frame. He walked lightly, almost like a cat, no…like a lion. There was something both suspicious and awe-inspiring about him. And his eyes were those of a man that knew what he wanted. Sophie found herself strangely impressed. It was a rarity that visitors of this type ventured into the mountains.

“Well, I’ll be getting my own sword soon enough,” Sophie stated. “My father will get one for me someday, I know he will.”

“With such skill as yours, you should receive your sword from a great man,” the stranger remarked. “Do you think your father is a great man?”

“Of course he is!” Sophie replied. “He is the hand of the lord, and the greatest man in all these mountains!”

“Greater than the lord he serves?”

“He has more wit than all the lords who ever held court in the castle, combined!”

“Then should he not be striving for something more than he is? Does not that book you read tell you so?”

She looked down at her book thoughtfully. “Yes, it says…those with keen minds are obliged to take their rightful place…”

“Very true, indeed,” he praised her.

“But Papa doesn’t believe it anymore,” she blurted. “He used to, but not anymore. He says he had his time at it, but he likes things the way they are now.”

“Do you really believe him?”

“Well, he wouldn’t lie,” she shot back defensively. “Not to me, anyway.”

“Let’s not call it a lie, exactly,” he offered. “But perhaps he’s thinking of you and your mother and sister.”

“Thinking of me?” she blurted. “But I’m not the one who wants things to stay as they are. Maybe Mama and Caitey, but all they’re interested in is embroidery and the like. Well, Caitey has been obsessed with drawing recently, but…oh, it’s all the same dull tosh. I want to be like Papa used to be, in the land across the sea. I want to be great, and bold, and powerful…”

“Then you should be dearest to him of all,” the stranger cooed, pushing her wild hair back over her shoulder. Sophie didn’t much like his touch, but his words made her feel proud inside. “Do you know, little warrior, I come from the land across the sea? I used to know your father, when he was a great man, indeed.”

Her eyes widened. “You did?”

“Yes, and I have come to ask him to return with me. There is unfinished business there which most needs his attention.”

Now she was enraptured. “Do you think he’d take me with him?”

The man chuckled a little. “My dear girl, I quite hope he will take along his whole family.”

“Oh, that would do no good,” she sighed. “Mother and Caitey would just spoil everything. They’d be happier staying here where they are. They’re not like us.”

Just then there was the sound of a dog barking and a shuffling in the fallen leaves. Sophie rolled her eyes. “Caitey, what are you doing back here?”

“I…I thought I’d give Ayra for a walk,” she answered quietly, although it was evident she was using the dog as something of a crutch to help her walk, as well. She couldn’t do it on her own for so many hours.

The man’s eyes darted to her. “Well, what do we have here?” he noted, scanning the little girl strangely. Then, like some hidden layer of paint suddenly revealing itself when the outer one chips, he snickered, “A female demon monkey…”

Sophie took a step back from him indignantly. “Don’t you call my sister that,” she growled.

He smirked. “Protective, aren’t you? Even though she’d…ruin everything?”

“Hell, I don’t care who you think you are, or where you come from; there was no call for that,” she spat. “You should apologize!”

But the man did not respond to the demand of the girl with the broken stick. He just took a step closer to her smaller sister, as if to study her further, like someone in a cage at a freak show. Then the dog, sensing something was amiss, reacted to the menacing presence with the full force of her protective instincts. Old as she was, she had an undying sense about her, and lunged at the man with teeth bared.  The man made some derogatory crack which was drowned out by the dog’s barking, but then he found his hand clamped between her jaws, and groaned.

Before either girl had a chance to react, he had his fine sword poised, and thrust it into the animal’s throat. Blood spurted over his clothing, and Caitey screamed as the loyal Arya rolled over on the ground, submitting to death with no more than a muted whimper. Sophie just stood speechless, gazing at the crimson splattering the cloak. When she met the man’s eyes again, she saw blood rising in them as well.

“Caitey, go home!” she yelped, suddenly sensing evil at work and wanting her little sister away from it. “Go home…”

Baelish had now grabbed a hold of her arm and put the blade up to her throat. “You’ll come along quietly, my little Lannister queen,” he snarled. “Quietly, in life or death…”

***

“Still carry a dagger in the dark, I hope?”

The voice in the shadows startled Tyrion Lannister, his head buried in his lord’s bookkeeping, as it often was late into the night. It was a voice old, out of place – it was a voice he had hoped had all but faded into memory. And it caused him to reach for the dagger he had finally purchased for himself that past summer. He had told his wife that it was only a show of his position as hand of the lord, a symbol of prestige. But she had looked at it with her eyes dulling at the sight. He had assured her again, it was of little importance.

But she read him too well. His instincts were still alive, they were growing alive again, as if waiting for something unknown, unseen. He had always had instincts like that, too keen for his own good sometimes. He liked to pretend he didn’t have them around his family, wanted them to just forget what he had been, as if it had never happened. Yet Sansa knew, she knew what he was. The North remembers, so they said.

And she knew when he bought the dagger what was gnawing away at him inside. And she feared for the father of her children, and one whose heart had been welded into hers unexpectedly through countless sufferings. She feared the lion still had claws…and that they were being sharpened again, for some threat yet to materialize…

And now, Tyrion knew, it had arrived. And with dagger unsheathed, he named him in the dark…

“Little Finger.”

The man snickered. “Have you been expecting me, a traveling stranger come to claim hospitality of this castle from your lord?”

“Not you in the particular.”

“Then any old ghost from the past?”

“Not any.” He turned his eyes up briefly. “Is my sister’s poison wet on your mouth?”

“You are quick to the game, aren’t you? How do you even know she’s still alive?”

“Because you are here,” Tyrion stated grimly. “And I would have felt her death in my bones long ago. The air, I think, would suddenly have seemed sweeter to me.”

Little Finger snickered. “It’s good air here, clean mountain air.” He took a seat for himself in front of Tyrion’s desk, uninvited.

“So why is it that you came to trek so far up into this good mountain air?” Tyrion queried. “Surely it must have been quite the hike.”

“Oh, you did prove quite elusive for a spell,” the visitor admitted. “Indeed, at times, it felt like an eternity. But coinage has a way of buying out even eternity, and loosening more than a few tongues, from Davneros merchants to the village peasantry.”

“How generous of you.”

“To be sure,” he beamed. “So, turning to more stimulating subjects…I hear tell you haven’t been able to put a son in her yet, even after all your time and travels with the simpleminded little she-wolf?”

“I think you know her better than to call her that,” he shot back.

“Yes, don’t I?” He raised an eyebrow. “She always was underestimated, and always harbored potential. Have you taught her anything, half-man? Taught her about the ways of this world? We both knew she could be taught to survive, if she just let a little of us into her…even just a little…”

“Baelish,” he snapped, his throat tensing.

“What? Have you become so very saintly my language comes off too crude for your ears? Have you learned to compress your own sharp tongue so well?”

“She’s mine, Baelish,” he stated, quietly. “Not yours to play with in your mind.”

“Possessive, aren’t you, little man?” He leaned forward a bit. “How many brothels have you slept in since you came here, hmm?”

He exhaled quietly. “Suffer as they might from the lack of my charms – and don’t think their suffering has not grieved me…no whores in this country have shared my company.”

Baelish smirked a little. “Your wit is not altogether dead, half man.”

“No, not dead,” he admitted. “Though mostly sheathed to better use it in necessity.”

“So you believed a necessity would arise?”

“I do not believe things I do not know,” he retorted. “But the things I know I believe in well enough.”

“Much has happened, Lannister, since you went away.”

“So I can well imagine,” he conceded, still not turning his eyes from the parchment in front of him. “Do you plan on regaling me with your tales?”

“Shall we start with the halls of kings or the houses of ill repute?”

“At your leisure,” he scoffed, although his chest felt tight.

“Jon Snow, your wife’s half-brother, still wages his resistance in the north. But he has become obsessed with his fanciful imaginings beyond the Wall. Some say he, like his brother Bran, has lost his mind. Oh, and your brother Jaime, he’s dead.”

Tyrion finally looked up, and though he tried, he could not contain a spark of something that sprang to his eyes. Whatever his brother may have been as a person, he had saved Tyrion’s life and sanity more than once. He had been the only family member that treated him as a man instead of just a dwarf. And though he imagined death in the wars might be his, the knowing of it fully twisted in his heart.

“Do you want to know how it happened?” Baelish led him along, not waiting for an answer before continuing. “It was your blushing bride’s sister, the littlest wolf of the pack. The wild one, the assassin. She poisoned the guests of Lord Frey in revenge for the death of her family at the Red Wedding. Your unfortunate brother happened to be among them.”

“And what’s become of her?” he asked quickly.

“She was disemboweled, by order of the queen,” Baelish responded. “It was quite the sight, slow done, like the butchering of deer, done with her own sword, her little needle…”

“Enough said,” he blurted. Though the girl may have assassinated his brother, and many others, he could hardly lay the full blame on her, not after all his family had done to hers. She had seen her longing for justice warp into a lust for vengeance. And so she turned the wheel yet again, and became a part of a feud. An easy enough thing to do. But then his attention recollected itself. “Did you just call Cersei…queen?”

“Ah, yes, did I neglect to mention? They’re dead, all dead…your father, your nephew Tommen, your brother. Your sweet little niece Myrcella was kidnapped and turned over to the Starks as a hostage years ago. You are the last male Lannister.”

Tyrion did not respond, just turned his eyes back down to his parchment. He dreaded being told the details of their fates, of his hated father and the innocent children of Cersei, doomed to suffer for their mother’s power struggles. He didn’t want to know. His only focus now was that she would be wanting him, wanting him and his brood in her power. And then she would try to use them, one by one, and watch as they made desperate moves to save the others. And then crush them all.

“She must have made you a fine offer for you to remain under the Lannister banner, with the Targaryen claimant so very close by, licking up the sea with dragon fire.”

Now Baelish seemed genuinely surprised, and Tyrion was gratified by the look of being caught off-guard smearing his face.

“You see, my clever player, here in the higher climes we hear…rumors, and rumors of rumors…wisps in the wind, that is all to be sure…but I have long smelt dragon smoke, very distant at first, but now…yes, I do believe it is getting closer to your own landed nest.” Tyrion leaned forward a little. “Are you not afraid of getting burnt at all?”

“You know me, Lannister,” he remarked. “I know how to play.”

“Moving your piece from square to square until you are finally run off the board?”

“If it ever happens.”

“Oh, it will happen. All things happen as they were meant, Little Finger.”

“And perhaps I believe you were meant to come with me,” Baelish offered.

“Do you think you could take me back peaceably?” Tyrion challenged. “Do you think you, a littler man than I, could cause me to bow to your schemes?”

“Don’t tell me you thought it wouldn’t chase you down from without, or pull you back from within,” Baelish hissed. “I know you, half-man, and how you operate. You had your blade of wit, and knew well how to make it sting. Don’t tell me you have forgotten how to play the game. You’re too good at it, I’m afraid.”

“No, not forgotten,” Tyrion rasped. “I could never forget it. But I could choose. I could choose to end my part in the game. I could decide that I had had enough, while there was still enough of me left to lead another kind of life. I could choose not to become like you, Baelish.”

“I do not believe I have done so terrible. It’s a hard game, a constant gamble on a knife’s edge of winning or dying, but it has served me well. I have climbed where you have sunk.”

“Yes, you have climbed, because climbing is all you can see. Just the rungs you cling onto, and pull yourself up on, always daring the chasm to swallow you. Because you don’t believe in anything else…you don’t know anything else. You must always keep climbing, up and up, with no destination in sight. You will never be satisfied, never be able to close your eyes in death, at peace.”

“Perhaps I do not intend to die,” he retorted.

“What? Afraid I shall torment you in hell, the demon monkey and all that?” Tyrion smiled slightly in spite of himself.

“Perhaps I shall tell death ‘not yet’, for every day that passes…”

“Death is a lady. She cannot be held off forever.”

“Perhaps, if death is female, she might desire more female companionship than male.”

Tyrion eyes narrowed, and there was fire in them. “Do not test me, Baelish.”

He snorted. “You, half-man?”

“Yes, me, the half-man,” he affirmed. “Remember, the reach of my arm is long because my mind is sharp. Knowledge is still power. And I can kill. I have tasted blood in my day, and I am not afraid to taste it again. If you bring even a semblance of harm to my wife or daughters, know well that you will suffer for it.”

“Ah, yes, your daughters,” Little Finger repeated. “I met them earlier. Your oldest little lion cub was playing with a stick, out in the woods. I showed her how a stick could easily be severed. You really should give her a sword of her own. It seems to be her deepest desire.”

Tyrion’s eyes narrowed. “What has she to do with you?”

“Maybe you should ask what I have to do with her,” he altered it slightly. “You’ve kept too much from the girl. She needs someone to…guide her…”

Before Tyrion could respond, he heard an awkward pattering in the hallway, and the voice of a sobbing child, “Papa, Papa!”

His eyes flashed to the doorway, and he saw Caitey, blood staining her dress and tears in her eyes as she blurted out, “Sophie…he took her away…”

Tyrion froze, then started towards his daughter, fright caught in his throat.

Baelish saw the surge of panic, and smiled. “Never fear, little father; it’s only dog’s blood.”

A tingle of relief, and of disgust, and impending calamity. “Caitey, go find your mother,” he choked, seeing how terrified his child looked, and being unable to comfort her in the presence of such a man as this. She seemed too distraught to respond for a moment, then finally did, staggering out into the hall.

Then he focused again on his adversary. “What of Sophie? Have you dealt her ill?” Tyrion’s voice was pale yet poisonous, drained of energy it seemed, yet coursing with an undercurrent that might take down the whole world with him.

“No ill to her that is not already within her,” he sneered. “She is rather like you, rather like your father before you. A little lion, with claws…”

“Baelish,” he growled, getting out from behind the desk. “If I am put in your debt, I will repay it, down to the last coins over your eyes. You know that much of me.”

“Think of it, half-man,” Little Finger began. “Perhaps I am acting in the best interests of your brood. The younger one may be not be worth much, but the oldest one seems to have inherited her mother’s comely face and form. In four or five years, I see no reason why a landed lord in a prominent house should not like to lay his hands on her…if she’s still in one piece…”

“When my daughters come of age, they shall have husbands who will be deserving of their love,” he growled. “Do you think I would ever gamble with their future like my family gambled with Sansa’s and mine, for the sake of politics?”

Just then, Sansa appeared at the door, her dress now stained from the blood that was on Caitey’s dress, and her eyes fixating on Little Finger. There was both a mist and a fire in those eyes. Her hand flew to her mouth, clenched in a fist, a fighting fist.

“You, you…” she spat out, “you touched her…you hurt…my child…you…”

There was a look in Baelish’s eyes that almost resembled wistfulness. “A mother wolf,” he whispered, and made to touch Sansa’s cheek. “I have loved them well…”

With all her might, she struck Baelish in the mouth with that fist, and he staggered back against the wall.

“Sansa, don’t!” Tyrion shouted, going to her side. “He has Sophie…”

“Wisely said, little man,” the stricken man snarked, wiping away the blood from his lip. “No harm will come to her if you use your usual intelligence to serve you in this situation…no, don’t try to follow me out; my men are with her, and if I do not return to them, things might devolve rapidly.”   He arched an eyebrow. “Expect a messenger to meet you to discuss terms at midday, by the lake across the woods.” Then he turned and strode out of the room.

“No! I won’t let it happen again, I won’t let it happen to my family again…” Sansa was crumpled on the ground now, sobbing in shock.

Tyrion gripped her arm roughly. “Sansa, stop, you must stop, one must think…”

“No, one must strike…”

“Strike, without thought, and our girl dies.”

Sansa had her hand pressed over her belly, as if to suppress pain, and shuddered.

“Don’t you see, it is the only way…oh, Sansa, listen to me…”

Her eyes were glazing from the horror, and she leaned back against the floor, her breathing strangled. “Not again…not again…” Her one hand was lying outstretched from her body and shaking now.  The other was still bunched in a fist, again pressing against her lips, her teeth.

Tyrion seized it away from her mouth, and slowly pried it open, kissing her palm. He saw blood on her quivering lip, where her teeth had bit through, and wiped it off with his thumb. “Sansa…hear me…we will get her back.”

“That’s what my mother used to say…that we’d all be back together…” she choked. “It never happened …”

“But I am a Lannister, and I can play their game with the same blades as they use,” he stated.

“No,” she blurted. “No, no…You can’t, you can’t…I’ll lose you both…they’ll take you back and destroy you…I can’t bear it again…not after so much…no, no…”

“Sansa, I’ve always known…known it might come to this…” He leaned down close to her. “You must trust the whole of me now…trust me to fight as I know how…with the mind…”

“You’ll go back,” he sobbed. “You’d let them take you back for her sake…”

“Sansa, you must trust…”

“No…I…I can’t…”

“Yes, you can…you will…” He pressed his lips into hers, his body feeling the rising and falling of her own, convulsed with tension. He felt her breathing into him, crying into him, breast against breast, and he let his hands caress her body until some relaxation, some comfort could be brought to her. He was kissing her neck, and massaging her breasts, and she moaned.

“It will come right, Sansa,” he whispered. “They can’t pull us apart, they can’t…I won’t let them…”

But even as Tyrion said these things, he felt his own eyes burn with the fear of uncertainly and the pain of some looming violence that always had its beak open for him and the ones he loved. He knew she could not bear another tragedy. She was too fragile, made so by a lifetime of loss. So he would have to play for all he was worth. Play it hard, play it cold, play it up to the hilt. He had to play though it might break him. For all their sakes.