When Baelish arrived early at the lakeside, he found not Tyrion, but Sansa waiting for him. Her eyes were hungry, her mouth taut, like a leery mother wolf watching the hunter who threatened her cubs.
“My lady,” the man addressed her with mock courtesy and a bow, “what an exceedingly pleasant surprise. You must know you please my eyes so much more than your lord husband…”
“Little Finger, what do you want?” Sansa demanded bluntly. “Have we not all suffered enough from this madness?”
“Not any more mad than your bearing a dwarf’s children.” He took a step closer to her, and made to touch her chin. “Such a good little mother.”
She closed her eyes. “Stop.”
He smiled strangely. “You’re living a lie, Sansa Stark. Living a lie with a liar in your bed. Do you think the same blood does not run in his veins as always did? The same devious mind at work, the same inclinations…?”
“You’re one to talk, Baelish,” she hissed.
“I am not here pretending to play house and turning my back on what I can make myself,” he countered. “I am not shaming myself with a false show of sanctity.” He shook his head at her dress, comparatively simple to what he had last seen her in, back in her youth in Westeros. “Oh sweet, homely little housewife. You should be proud of yourself, you who once would be queen.”
“You may serve your precious queen until she is burnt up in dragon fire,” she stated, her voice blazing. “I want more than you have to offer, for all your pride.”
“I not only have pride,” he chortled. “I make things happen.”
“You can have it all,” she shot back, “your power of dirt. It does nothing to create and everything to destroy.”
He chuckled and walked around her. “Does he know that you’re here, my lady?”
She shook her head. “I…don’t want you to touch him.” She faced him boldly. “I demand that you take me to my daughter.”
“You’re turning yourself over to me, then? To do with as I please?”
“To do with me what you would do to others,” she countered, gripping him hard by the shoulders. “Cersei would want me…she could use me as a hostage, to treat with my brother in the north…”
“You think highly of yourself, do you not?”
“If there are so few Lannisters, how many Starks do you think are left?” Her eyes narrowed. “We are rare commodities, Baelish.”
“Yes, you are.” He seized her by the wrists, and pressed his lips against her own. She squirmed away and spit in his face. He smiled strangely. “Such spirit. Just like your mother.”
“Don’t ever speak about my mother,” she blurted.
“You’re right, she was too much the fool,” he replied. “She preferred the stupid nobility of your father, and look where it got the both of them.”
“My father…he was a man!” she shouted. “And you? What have you ever been?”
“A man, as well, my lady Sansa,” he assured quietly. “Or did you never think men could be like me?”
She shuddered. “Yes, then,” she admitted, almost sadly. “You are a man indeed, or one that one may become if lost to even himself.”
“As much as I’d love to philosophize with you at length, I believe you have more pressing concerns.” He pulled a length of cloth from out of his vest. “You want to see your daughter, don’t you? Want to see her keep her health?”
“Do not torture me, Baelish,” she hissed.
“Of course not,” he refuted, and swiftly started tying the cloth around her eyes. “I shan’t keep you in suspense a moment longer. Now come along, my lady, and let me be your guide.”
She knew in her heart and mind the danger of this, of what she had done. She knew rapidly that Tyrion would think her a stupid fool for it, but she was not him. She could not live on keen analysis; she was sniffing out her own, with the blazing instinct of any animal mother, with the wild loyalty of any Stark. She knew that often enough such loyalty had brought ruin to her family…but she could not help herself any more than she could sit idly by.
And so she felt him pulling her along by the arm. She felt underbrush tangle in her dress and scratch her legs. She felt the whip of branches in her face. She felt moistness and then sogginess in the earth beneath her.
“Best take off your shoes, my lady,” she heard her captor suggest.
“No,” she refused.
“Modest, eh?”
She felt him splash mud in her face, down her dress. She heard him laugh.
“Now the old Sansa I knew would have reacted in panic to that,” he noted. “You really have grown up, haven’t you?”
She felt him draw closer to her, his breath near her neck.
“I like the way you’ve grown up,” he whispered, and Sansa felt sick.
“Take me to my daughter,” she demanded with as much authority as she could muster, though her heart had started to pound. After all, he really could do anything with her. She didn’t even know where she was.
But to her surprise he relented. “Your wish is my command,” he assured courteously.
So onward they went, in what Sansa was sure was a circle, yes, a circle…taking her back to far too many memories, far too many scenes she thought she had left behind her long before. She was always being taken away by force it seemed, in hopes of finding something precious to her, only to have it slip through her fingers. But she would have to risk it again, nevertheless…
Then she sensed she was no longer in the woods, no…she was in the open air and then…being guided down hard stairs. There was more wetness beneath her as she was pulled along, and her free hand brushed up against a hard, cold surface. When Baelish finally took the blindfold off of her, her mind rushed fast to recognize her surroundings even as her eyes struggled to adjust to the dark. They were in…some sort of tunnel that led out into a dungeon.
“Where are we?” she demanded.
“Where you kindly requested you be taken,” he asserted, then pushed her in farther.
Her eyes adjusted to what seemed to be a cellar, with both barrels and cauldrons lying about, as if used for brewing, or heating, or some form of alchemy. She also saw stairs inside, leading up to somewhere, though she knew not where. Then she saw soldiers, hired men, three of them, all with unshaven faces and rough leather clothes. And off to side she saw Sophie leaned up against a wall in the corner. When she saw her mother, she sprang to her feet.
“Mama…”
“Sophie!”
She rushed towards her daughter, but Baelish seized her by the arm. She again made to slap him, but he was quicker than her this time, blocked the blow, and instead struck her across the face. She blinked but did not turn away, only steeled herself silently, like a statue of a warrior queen. She had come a long way from when she had been tormented and struck in the presence of King Joffrey so many years before.
“You are a terror for children, Baelish, not for me,” she stated with as much confidence as she could manage. “Now let me go to my child…”
Then Baelish took a hidden knife out of his clothing and pressed it up against her throat, with a perverse smile on his face. He was taunting her, she knew that.
She glowered at him. “You will not kill me, Little Finger. You’re too clever for that.”
He chuckled. “No, but perhaps I might…nick you a little? Maybe give you a scar, to match your husband’s?” He moved the knife up towards her cheek.
“You will not do that, either,” she stated. “My face…is too much like another’s.”
“Then perhaps I might nick another little face…” In an instant, he had seized Sophie, and pressed a blade to her cheek.
“No, stop!” Sansa shrieked, jerking forward and being yanked back by one of the soldiers. She regretted her reaction in an instant, for she knew Little Finger had caught her at her weakest, had her where he wanted her.
He smiled. “You’ll do anything for your child, won’t you?”
She stared him down. “Put away your knife…”
“Won’t you, my lady?” He pressed the blade a little harder and a trickle of blood descended down the child’s cheek, although she would not cry out.
“Don’t do anything, Mama,” Sophie warned through gritted teeth. “Don’t…”
“Oh, my little cub, a wolf mother cannot help herself,” Baelish noted, “can she?”
Sansa couldn’t stop herself from shaking her head.
He pushed Sophie away and put his hand under Sansa’s chin. “Come with me, dear sweet Sansa. We’ll forget about such nasty things.”
She felt a shiver travel up her spine. She had to stop him, had to stall him, by whatever means necessary…oh…
With that, he dragged both mother and daughter into an adjacent chamber and closed the door. “Now, Sansa, we can give your daughter a little education,” he remarked wryly, “and maybe teach your husband a little lesson too. Mustn’t let him become too greedy, what?”
He had forced her down on the bed now. She squirmed. “Now, now…don’t do that…you might enjoy this more than your realize, after bedding a dwarf so long. And your child’s face is not easy for me to cut off…”
She felt a surge of strange memories from her marriage night, when Tyrion had been her worst fear. Oh, Tyrion, dear Tyrion…how time had a way of transforming one’s fears into still more fears, so alike and so different…would she ever be free from the garment of fear of defilement?
“It’s always summer under the sea…”
She heard him singing, perversely, as he unbuckled his sword belt, and it slipped down onto the ground. She winced at the clacking sound, and felt his body lowering onto hers.
“The birds have scales, the fish take wing…”
She felt him pulling open the top of her dress, and his hands sliding across her bare breasts. She tightened as he gripped them, tears piercing her eyes. It hurt…was he trying to tear them off?
“The stones crack open, and the water burns…”
Her breath caught, and then his mouth crashed into hers, seeming to suck out whatever breath was left. She felt his own bare chest pressing down on her, and she wanted to scream, to bite, and she thought the pressure might break her ribs…
“The shadows come to dance, my love…the shadows come to play…”
She felt his hands on her throat, a mocking threat to stifle any cries for good, and then the heat of his mouth against her neck, and his ravenous breath beating against it.
“The shadows come to dance, my love…the shadows come to stay…” he smiled cruelly as he reached down beneath her skirt to force open her legs. “Your demon monkey is worth something to me now. The last of the Lannister line. And you’ve just made it all the easier for me to take him back…”
Suddenly, Baelish stifled a moan and tightened, shock contorting his features as something long and sharp thrust through his back.
Sansa did not wait to find out what was happening, but hit him hard across the mouth and pushed him off of her. Sitting up, to her astonishment, she found her daughter Sophie standing there, the handle of Little Finger’s sword clenched in her fist, the point thrust through his lungs. She had a mixture of satisfaction and disgust on her face, as he doubled over on the bed, wheezing as the blood dribbled out of his mouth.
Why was she worried suddenly that her daughter might be enjoying it too much? Might be trying to twist the blade deeper and deeper into the vile man to prolong the agony? Might be becoming another little Arya, the assassin, the assassinated?
“Sophie,” Sansa blurted breathlessly, “pull it out…pull it out of him…then run…”
“Mother…”
“Sophie go, make a run for the tunnel…”
“Not without you!”
Sansa pulled the top of her dress together and stood up from the bed. She took her daughter’s hand in hers. “Pull it out…” she pleaded in a whisper.
As soon as the thing was done, she seized her daughter by the hand and drew her away to the far side of the room. Then her wolf-ears pricked up, and she heard the sound of a voice she knew, amidst the soldiers’ laughter.
“A lion, a wolf, and an apple,” she was saying. “That is what your fate holds in store.”
“What’s the apple for?” a soldier demanded. “What’s it mean?”
“Perhaps it holds the seeds of many things yet to be revealed,” she offered.
“What things, old woman?”
“Things that bite,” she responded.
“Be careful we don’t bite, hag,” one of them snarled. “We should have killed you as soon as you came down those stairs…”
Sansa slowly opened the door and saw it was indeed Sauriel. Her heart skipped a beat, not sure what to think. Where were they, anyway? What was happening?
“You would not kill one who bore a healer’s crystal,” she responded calmly. “Nor one who could stir the contents of these cauldrons. You are far too…how shall we say it? Superstitious…”
Just then Sansa spied her husband on the stairs, and saw that he was armed with a crossbow. Quickly, she decided it best to use herself as a diversion. So she slipped out from behind the door and pulled her daughter out with her, though still keeping her safely blocked by her body. The scuffling alerted the two men, whose eyes shot to where she was, but Sauriel was faster. She had thrown something in their faces…Sansa could imagine it was some type of herb she had been taught to grind into powder, the kind that left a man choking and dazed if thrown up into the face.
The shots rang out in fast succession. The first man was down before he could even draw his weapon. The second seized his bow, but had a shaft in him before he could release his own bolt. The third had his weapon primed and ready to release. But he had forgotten the old woman beside him, and the gnarled walking stick leaned up against her stool, which promptly struck between his shoulder and his neck, knocking him off balance. By then Tyrion had already reloaded, and launched his final shaft.
“The seeds of many things,” Sauriel repeated, almost sorrowfully, as the stricken man died, stretched out upon the table in front of her. The sight of the blood caused her to close her healer’s eyes tight, as if binding herself to a future vision, a cutting one…
“Tyrion…” Sansa panted breathlessly, rushing forward.
“What in the name of the gods caused you to go out? What the bloody damn hell?!”
But she could not answer his anger all at once, just blurted, “How…how did you find us?”
“Thank Caitey,” Sauriel noted. “She happened to be on the lower floor, nearest the grate, and heard voices…”
“What grate? I don’t…”
“You’re in your own home, Sansa,” Tyrion blurted, somewhat exasperated. “Or at least the dungeon of it, led out from a tunnel. The last place Baelish ever thought we might look…” Then his face blanched, caution narrowing his eyes, as he saw his wife’s torn upper dress.
Sansa swallowed, flushing with shame, but before she could say anything Sophie spoke up.
“I killed him, Papa, for what he did…” Her voice was half in triumph, half in terror. “I killed him with a sword…”
“Where?” her father croaked.
She pointed in the direction of the adjacent room.
When he entered, he found a blood-soaked Baelish struggling to sit up in the bed.
“Did you…touch her?” Tyrion hissed. “Did you…touch my wife?”
The stricken man grinned cynically, blood staining his teeth. “Possessive, aren’t you…little man?”
Tyrion cocked his bow at the man’s heart.
“Go on, half-man, do it…”
Tyrion kept his arrow aimed. He wanted to do it, like a hunger deeper than almost any he had known, yearning to gnaw through the flesh and bone of him, to kill in him all that was evil outside himself, inside himself. He could do it now, do it and be done with it, and feel justified in it, satisfied in it.
He could be a Lannister again.
He could bring the dagger back to his hand, the dagger he had thrown away, long, long ago.
“Go on, I know what you are, you can’t get away from it…” Baelish made a twisted, pained grin. “You and I are the same…in the end…”
The same…the same…?
These words sunk inside and twisted within him. Oh, the stall, the split-second stall, and then turning his eyes to Sansa who was standing behind him, as if seeking out her own feelings, her own thoughts on what he was doing, or not doing…then he saw her eyes flash wide.
“Tyrion…knife!”
His eyes shot back to Baelish, with a dagger extended, the secret kind all those at court learned to carry, ready to throw it at Sophie, in one last petty act of retribution. Then everything happened so fast, in brutal succession.
The knife flew from Little Finger’s hand at the same instant the bolt flew from Tyrion’s bow, striking the man through the throat, and with a gurgling gasp, ending forever his upward climb. But the blade was already in motion, cutting through the air to its destination…
Sansa screamed, and Tyrion turned in horror, seeing that the knife had not struck his daughter, but was lodged deep within Sauriel’s breast, after blocking the child just in time. The woman looked at the weapon protruding from her, smiled a slight, grim, knowing smile to herself, and then proceeded to pull it out. The blood poured out in a stream, and she sank to ground, with Sophie standing over her, shocked into silence.
“Sauriel!” Sansa rushed to her side. “No, oh, no, no…”
The old wise woman opened her eyes, and met the younger woman’s. “There is no need to look so, little bird,” she whispered. “All things foreseen must come in their good time.”
“But not for you…not over this…” Sansa blurted. “You had nothing to do with…with this…”
“Or everything to do with it,” she countered weakly. “Perhaps…I was sent…a coin, a lion, a wolf…and apple, red as blood…”
“I should have killed him…when I had the chance,” Tyrion choked, struggling to contain himself.
“No, no,” Sauriel rasped. “You felt pity for him. It is no mean thing. You saw him for what he was…and that saved you.”
“Sauriel, please…please don’t leave us now…” Sansa’s voice cracked, as she pressed her sash against the gaping wound.
“It is meant to be,” she said softly. “My life has not been my own…since the day your life was brought back to you…”
“What…?”
“It is as it should be. You are as I have been, and I am what you will be. The healer’s crystal is yours alone to carry now. Wear it well.” She reached out her hand over her belly. “May the feuding die here. Only female children shall leave this womb…”
And so it was that Sauriel died.