A.N.: Basically I just did this for the hell of it; I haven't actually gotten to "A Feast For Crows" or season 4 of the show yet, but through the power of the internet, I consider myself fairly "aware" of the plot. Here's me doodling with what I've learned in an attempt to explore everyone's favorite creepyship. Possibly vague and inaccurate - you'll just have to live with that. May or may not be continued.

A gift for my beta, Mztlynne.

The Red Wolf and the Mockingbird

"I can't do it." Sansa's hands were usually so sure when she was building her castles in the snow, her fingers so dexterous as she outlined every door and rampart. She had just crushed the library tower under shaking hands. "I can't, Lord Baelish!"

He smiled that sardonic smile, the one that just crooked the side of his mouth and never reached his eyes. It was a smile Sansa was sure she hated, but then again, he wore it so well. "Petyr."

Now was not the time to focus on that. "Please, don't make me marry Ser Harrold."

"Sansa, sweetling..." The Lord Protector of the Vale could have a soothing voice, when he chose. It made her think of the way he calmed the raving madness of her aunt at the Moon Door before he- "You act as if I want this."

The Stark girl's red brows pulled together, her pink mouth pursed, and she failed to notice the green-grey eyes of Littlefinger upon the motion. "Don't you?"

"This is for you, sweetling," he assured her, pulling her mittened fingers from around the ruins of the snow version of Winterfell's library tower. She was imagining all the books therein that she would never read, all the shelves and the musty scents of ancient paper...how little she had appreciated it, when she had it. How true that was of life. "Take Harry the Heir, you take the Vale. Unite the North with the East, and the lions of Casterly Rock will take quick steps back to their dens." Sansa doubted it would be that simple. Equally true, she knew Lord Baelish knew it to be not that simple. "But as I said, this is for you. How do I benefit with you sitting in the Eyrie?" Just because Sansa didn't have an answer to that didn't mean there wasn't one. "I thought you wanted Winterfell?"

"I do." Littlefinger was cruel, to taunt her with that, all while her drab brown skirts dripped around her icy facsimile of a nearly forgotten home. He damn well knew she wanted it more than anything else – at least...Sansa thought she did. In cold, long nights in the Eyrie, when she couldn't sleep, Sansa attempted to comfort herself with thoughts of home: the howling of the wolf pups in the yard, the sound of her septa scolding Arya's shoddy needlework. She thought of the weeping face of the heart tree, the feeling of heat that pulsed through the stones of the castle from ancient hot springs. Sansa had thought she wanted Winterfell – have it in her hands and life might return to a better place of being. In the darkness of a cold night in the Vale, she realized that was not so. What she missed was not merely the smell of the horses in the stable, the white and grey banners billowing in the breeze. It was the kindly face of her lord father, the beauty of her Tully mother. She missed the sound of Robb's practice sword ringing against Jon's in the yard – yes, she even missed her half-brother. She missed Rickon's begging for sweets and Bran constantly climbing the castle walls.

Get back Winterfell, and she got back nothing.

….Almost nothing. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

"Nothing for nothing, my little red wolf." Lord Baelish had taken off her glove and was warming her stiff, frozen fingers with his own. How very...different. Sansa's gaze passed from her naked hand (strangely intimate, entangled with his own) to his steely eyes. He looked so intense when they were alone like this. "I'm afraid if you want the Boltons out of your ice palace, we need an army at our backs." Our backs. Sansa shivered. She was surprised to find the sensation not unpleasant. "Cold, my sweetling?"

"I'm alright." She was cold, but she didn't mind it. She was a wolf, after all. The last true wolf.

The fingers of his free hand had found her chin, and he tilted her face towards him as he knelt before her in the snow: it was so strange, but she felt an electric thrill course through her body when Lord Baelish – Petyr – was like this with her. It was something about the elegant length of his fingers, so suited to the scratching of his quill; something about how strangely, pleasantly warm his hands were against her bare skin; something about having a man kneel before Sansa that made her pulse pound in places it didn't used to. "Tell me, sweet Sansa," he said in that disarming purr of his. "What is it about our Young Falcon that so frightens you, hm?"

Sansa felt herself blushing. It was strange, really, to still feel so modest around Lord Baelish, when they were alone in the snows outside the Eyrie's gates, totally without proper escort. Why would anyone question the Lord Protector going out with his bastard daughter? The snowy treeline afforded them perfect privacy. Yet Sansa could not think of Baelish as a father: how could she? Her own had had such a gentle face, not like the sharp features of Littlefinger. Petyr had none of his quiet nobility and honor, none of that perfectly platonic press of warmth and chaste kisses. And so she thought of him as a man, not as her father.

It made the color at her cheeks intensify.

Still, she managed to answer, despite all her blushing (maybe he would think it a product of the cold? And maybe she would find silver stags hidden in her stockings...). "The...the marriage bed," she hesitated, and flinched at the terrible, sharp smile that crossed Lord Baelish's face.

"Ah, yes..." The fingers that had held her chin instead went to brush against the creamy roundness of her cheek, and Sansa thought she might look away – but it was impossible for her to do so. "All these intrigues, and a maiden still."

"D-don't say it like I should be ashamed."

"I can think of nothing further from the truth, my Lady." He raised her bare fingers to his lips and kissed them – lingering a moment or two longer than was appropriate. Sansa tugged her hand back shyly, but with purpose.

"I do not think he will be willing to wait, like Tyrion was."

Petyr made a face. "He is not your chivalrous Imp, that is true."

Absurdly, Sansa felt compelled to defend her (former?) husband. "Don't say these things, Lord Baelish. Tyrion was the only Lannister to treat me with any kindness. I-I suppose excepting Myrcella and little Tommen, b-but-"

"Let us focus on the matter at hand, my sweet." Lord Baelish brushed her protestations aside even as he slid the soft mitten back onto her now warmed hand. "You are worried about the...masculine virility of our Young Falcon, hm?" He was making fun of her again. Sansa shoved her hands into her lap and turned her face away from him with an un-ladylike huff. Baelish chuckled and began to repair the damage done to her library tower – without his ever having seen it. It made her blink blue Tully eyes. "There are a few ways out of this, as I see it."

Sansa's countenance lifted slightly. She began to reinforce the west wall with snow. "There are?"

"If Harry Hardyng so offends you, of course I will call this whole thing off."

Sansa could scarce dare to hope. "You would do that?"

"Yes. But Sansa Stark would never return to Winterfell." He saw the look of pain across her face, and like a consummate player of the game, managed to ignore it. "I will hide you away from Lannister eyes, my sweet. I suppose Harrenhall, though they'd be less likely to look in the Fingers. Or shall I spirit you away across the Narrow Sea, like the Targaryen girl?"

"Stop it, Petyr."

"Ah, at last, like music to my ears! Stop what, sweet Sansa?"

"You are saying these things to hurt me."

"Hurt you?" He looked up from where he had fixed the library; Sansa was amazed to see he had dug beneath the snows to find browned grasses to line across the rooftop. His fingers were icy cold against her face where his hands framed her, but she found she enjoyed the sensation, somehow. "The last thing I want, I can assure you."

"...what is the other option?"

"If it is the marriage bed you object to...then I will not allow him to touch you."

At this, Sansa scoffed, and she saw a flash of affront cross his steely grey eyes. "Impossible..."

His grip on her face tightened as she attempted to turn away, and had it been anyone else, Sansa might have been frightened. How had Joffrey used to manhandle her? Or the strong hands of his Hound? But, somehow, she knew that Petyr wouldn't hurt her. If that had been his aim, it could have been done a thousand times over between here and their first meeting at the Hand's Tourney. Whatever he wanted, it wasn't her pain.

"You think so, my little wolf pup? And impossible it would be to spirit the last Stark out of the Red Keep?"

Sansa pursed her mouth slightly, but her blue eyes were smiling. "Well, what was it that you had in mind?"

His icy hand stroked down the length of her rough spun sleeve, his eyes trailing where his fingers touched. "When Harry the Heir stands at the sept with all the Vale lords watching, it will steal their breath to find a Stark maiden walking down the aisle, with a direwolf emblazoned on her cloak. For Harry's proper maiden bride, an army would storm most any keep. It does not, however, follow that Harry needs be the one to claim her maidenhead."

Sansa found herself quite out of breath at this imagining, nearly scoffing. "I think he would be likely to insist."

Baelish was smirking in that telling way of his again. "When will you ever trust me, Sansa, sweetling? Enough strong wine in a man like Hardyng, a little blood on the sheets, and he will be happy to believe he performed for his wife with a manly flourish – once he is awake and free of a splitting headache."

The young girl did not say a word – in truth, she did not know what to say. Her shocked (well, pleasantly shocked) blue eyes traveled from Littlefinger's still pleased features to the snowy battlements of her childhood home. Her red lips were parted in wonder. "...b-but, Lord Baelish-"

"Are we back to formal terms again?"

"-how would that help anything? Surely Ser Harrold would grow suspicious when he next tries to claim me and I act as a..." She found herself staring into her lap. "A blushing maid."

"Simple, my sweet." He had taken her hands in his own and was drawing her slowly to her feet. Sansa appreciated the care he took not to crush her castle of snow. "I am sure he can be sent to conquest quite readily, a young man of his zeal aches to go to war. And if that is not insurance enough...do not be a maid after your wedding night." When she opened her mouth to protest, she found his lithe, warm finger pressed against her parted lips. "But that does not mean you need give your gifts to Harry."

Sansa blinked, feeling damp snowflakes melt into the dark curtain that was her hair, hid beneath a disgusting film of brown dye. Sansa hated the lie of her hair, hated that she had to answer to the name of "Stone," and not of "Stark." It was not who she was, she refused to let it be. And the only one who knew her, really knew her, was... "Did you have someone in mind, my Lord?"

He was still smirking at her, and his eyes were dark. A cool, bare hand had come to cup gently at her throat, to stroke the white column of her neck in a way that was, shockingly, not at all frightening. Not under these thin, lithe hands. "Innocent you may be, sweetling, but ignorant you are not."

Sansa blushed, because she was still a highborn lady, and she would never forget that, no matter what color her hair might be dyed. "Marry Ser Harrold and take another man to bed?"

"'Another man...'" Lord Baelish snorted. "I would steal you from the bridal chamber myself."

"That is a...a terrible deceit!" She said it, but she didn't feel it, not in her chest. Her lips were smiling. She tried to wipe it away, but could not.

Lord Baelish's thin hands were at the line of her waist, and it tickled where he dug into the sensitive bones of her hips. "I spirited you out of King's Landing for many reasons, sweet Sansa." He was so close, the heat of his body underneath the warm cloak of furs felt like a raging fire to the young Stark girl. "To see you bedded by a man like Harrold Hardyng was not among them."

"What sort of man is he?" She was not sure where her rashness stemmed from...yet she found she enjoyed it.

Littlefinger was smirking again. "A mongrel pup trying to mount a direwolf. Am I worse choice, to hold this secret?"

"Lord Baelish – you are blackmailing me."

"Lady Stark – so it would seem." Sansa tried to repress her smile and stared at her fur-lined boots in the snow – but it was no use at all. She thought of what her lady mother might say, her childhood friend so blatantly flirtatious with her eldest daughter. She thought of the disapproval Lord Eddard Stark would wear on his face like a veil. She attempted to find the Lord Protector of the Vale utterly disgusting, and could not. He was not like any of the other men she had known in her rapid ascent to adulthood: he was no golden prince, like Joffrey, no shimmering Knight of Flowers, like Loras. He was nothing like any of her childish dreams or fantasies. On the field of battle, with sword or lance, Littlefinger would have been an instant failure. Yet he had survived, had lived and thrived, where so many high, strong and noble men had not...even her own father. He had not his honor, his highborn bloodlines, but he had a mind of devious machinations that were stunningly beautiful in their brilliance – and all bent on saving her. If that was not a trait to admire, Sansa did not know what was.

A younger Sansa would have been horrified at her current state, of the way she tilted her head when Lord Baelish bent his warm lips to caress the soft skin of her neck and shoulder. It was all so inappropriate, and yet it filled her with an electric thrill she had never known before, not for all her heart's flutterings near Joffrey or Loras. It was the one time she hadn't felt constantly afraid since her father's head was cleaved from his shoulders at the Sept of Baelor. It might be foolish, once again, in light of everything she knew – everything she didn't know – but she trusted the Lord Protector when he held her in his wiry arms like this. It was paradise. Was this, then, desire? Was this feeling of heat spreading through her gullet adulthood? Had this driven her Lord father to sire Jon Snow, or was it something so much...deeper? Something that made her wrap her arms around her mockingbird savior and shiver with delight instead of cold?

The way Littlefinger held her, their bodies were a continuous line of heat in the stark white of the snowy world. It was wonderful. "My Lady..." he purred against her skin, drawing away just enough to look in her foggy, blue eyes.

Sansa blinked and tried to steady herself. "Y-you usually call me at least Lady Sansa."

"So I do." His thumb trailed across her lower lip and her mouth opened on instinct. "But two can play your games of courtesies."

Sansa's Tully blue eyes half closed, her red lips smiled. "Petyr..."

"Mm, what a quick-witted girl. Yes, sweetling?"

"You mean to say...marry Ser Harrold and take a lover to fulfill his offices of marriage?"

"Until this particular farce need no longer be played..." He lowered his mouth to hers. "Yes."

"A-and after that marriage...ends," because it would, she knew Lord Baelish well enough to know that. "-what then?"

"An excellent question." He brushed his lips against her own again in the merest suggestion of a kiss. Sansa mentally chided herself when she realized she had leaned forward to chase his retreating mouth. "What do you want then, Sansa?"

The Sansa Stark who had arrived at King's Landing was soft, with dreams of handsome husbands and dozens of children. She would have been happy enough to get back Winterfell, even in a ruin, to find a place to hide away and lick her wounds. The Sansa Stark who left King's Landing was not that girl: beneath her eyes of Tully blue, a steel had been forged, and it glittered in equal measure to Littlefinger's. "I want to tear Casterly Rock stone from stone."

"Yes." Lord Baelish kissed her rose-cold cheek.

"I want to sew all its fields with salt and burn what's left."

"Yes." He kissed the opposite.

"I am going to make the lion queen watch as what was done to my father is done to the Kingslayer..."

"Yes." His voice was husky when he kissed her, his lips firm and warm and deliciously sinful against her own. Sansa kissed him back with a fervor that shocked herself.

"Petyr."

He did not stop kissing her, but asked between small caresses, "Yes, sweetling?"

"This is no small task...why would you help me?"

"Hmm..." At last, the mockingbird stopped the soft press of his mouth and let his forehead rest against hers. Sansa breathed in the sharp taste of mint from his lips and had to close her eyes and swallow at the dizzy sensation that overcame her just then. "Well – tear rich Casterly Rock stone from stone, and a mockingbird might make off with all its pretty treasures."

"You can have them, I don't care."

"Bow the heads of all these highborn fools, and I will admit, my injured pride would be rather soothed – as just a little lordling from the Fingers." Sansa laughed a little, and wound her fingers into his hair. She hadn't known he could be so sensitive, especially with her.

"And when the Iron Throne is vacant, love, and the Baratheons and Lannisters and all their military might have completely torn each other apart...who would you place in the seat of power."

Sansa thought it strange if he meant him – when he had already said the men of the Vale would never follow Baelish into the reconquest of the North. It was then she noticed the way his eyes bore into her, a look that stole the breath from her body, a look that...spoke of pride. Pride in the girl who knew what honor was, and knew also how to compromise to survive, to take the best and worst of the Realm and come out better for it. To play the Game, and to win.

"M-me? B-but- Robb was trained for lordship, I was meant only to marry lords! I know nothing of ruling!"

His arms wrapped around her waist, his fingers interlacing at the small of her back, and Sansa's head dipped so that his face nuzzled into her hair. "Sweet Sansa...if I got you as far as the Red Keep...why would I leave you there?"

Sansa Stark knew she should have been terribly frightened by this admission: that Littlefinger was seeking power for himself, that she was nothing but a pawn on his board as he played with far more skill than anyone else in the Seven Kingdoms.

Sansa Stark smiled instead – and raised her head to look at him with fresher eyes.

"We could have turned on each other a hundred times...at King's Landing, after the Moon Door."

He raised a dark brow. "An interesting sentiment to bring up so suddenly – but you are correct."

"But you have not betrayed me yet."

"Nor you I."

Sansa hesitated only a moment before her mouth crashed into her protector's, felt his arms tighten against her in a bruising grip that she loved. Every crushing moment of it. The Iron Throne was nothing to her, but she would gladly give it to Baelish – because he would gladly give her the Vale and Winterfell. A wiser woman would have reserved her heart, would have been looking for the knife ready to be plunged into her waiting back. Sansa, though, was tired of intrigues. If Petyr wished to destroy her, he was welcome to it, and to everything else she had to give.

Because, for the first time in so long, she felt quite sure if she asked something of him...he would deliver it to her, as well, despite all the many good reasons not to indulge a dangerous Stark girl. And what was the point of all these courtly intrigues when happiness was here, in the snow, with a man's arms around her? It all seemed so simple from this position.

When at last the kiss ended, Sansa thrilled to see the darkness that overcame Lord Baelish's eyes, to see a slip in his careful mask of control – and know she was the source. She fiddled flirtatiously with the clasp of his mockingbird pin and smiled at him. Sansa was an innocent girl...but she was a girl ready to reach womanhood. "I think a wolf and a mockingbird could be a much better match than many appreciate, my Lord."

Littlefinger nearly grinned at her – nearly. But she could see it in his eyes, and that was enough. "A union no one would ever expect, my Lady – and therefore all the better."