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“Aaaahhh-ve Maaaria…”
“Aaaahhh-ve Mariiii-yaaaa….”
Someone was singing the Mother’s hymn over him; he could just make out the pleading strains floating across the air and up to the Mother’s deaf ears.
A tingling in his hand made itself know, a wet kind of tingling with sharp grainy sand stabbing up as he tried and failed to shake the feeling away. The Mother’s hymn continued on, heedless of his awakening.
“…pro nobis pecatoribus…”
It’s indignation that brings him to full wakefulness. “No such things as sinners,” he mumbles, and realizes that the wet tingling in his hand has a taste in his mouth, coppery and thick, like a dirty ha’penny.
The hymnal comes to a blessed stop.
“Thank the gods, old and new, that you had the presence of mind to strap yourself in,” says the singer, her speaking voice even more beautiful than her singing (because it wasn’t debasing itself with the ignorant pleadings of the unwashed masses).
It was a voice that he knew in his bones, and he shivered painfully in recognition.
“Sweetling—”
“I’d tell you not to talk, Petyr, but that might send you into shock and I don’t think I’d like to see you dead quite yet,” Sansa said wryly.
Petyr couldn’t stop himself from rising to her bait, loving the chance to banter with her once more, even if he was dying (if he was dying, he wasn’t sure what dying felt like, but suspected it might be something like what he was experiencing), “And let you miss the chance to hear what I sound like when I’m at the Stranger’s door?”
He heard her huff out an exasperated breath, “You’re not dying, you fool, you only wish you were because your brain is signaling your nerve endings that you’re in pain.”
“Ah,” was his reply.
“And in a moment, you’ll realize that you’ve come up against the one problem you can’t pay to go away; at least until you’re in hospital and they’re pumping you full of milk of the poppy. But I’m not as generous as your nurses will be, so you will lay there and suffer the rewards of your stupidity.”
“You used to say such sweet things to me, Sansa; what happened?”
“I grew up, Littlefinger. I grew up and suddenly knew I didn’t need you anymore.”
Petyr acknowledged to himself that she never needed him; he’d only deceived her into thinking she did.
Somehow, his private thought crowded up his throat, pushing against his tongue until it tumbled out, bloody and true, “You never needed me, sweetling. The truth was, is, that I am horrifically dependent on you.”
Through his bleary eyes he could see bright red bob up and down in agreement. “Big of you to admit it, Littlefinger; if only someone had hit you with a lorry five years ago.”
Burning hope ignited in his chest. “Would you still be with me if one had, Sansa?”
She was quiet, but he recognized it as her thoughtful silence, an absence that he’d profoundly missed and almost wish she wouldn’t answer so he could enjoy it a moment longer.
“I don’t know, Petyr. Maybe? But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”
A wailing broke through the air, and Petyr thought its ringing was not unlike the Mother’s hymn. Both were equally jarring and unwelcome.
“Sweetling, I could—”
“Be different? Change?” Sansa lightly mocked.
Petyr quieted. She was right.
“No, I couldn’t change; I wouldn’t want to, not really, even if it meant you’d come back.”
“Aye, there’s the rub,” Sansa agreed, “you will never change and I’ve changed too much.”
“We could try again?”
“What, like dating? You, me, candlelit dinners in expensive restaurants with hundreds of witnesses?”
Unknown hands began to grab at him, feeling for broken bones, checking his pulse, pulling him away from her. He flinched and tried to feebly bat them away, but they were insistent and uncaring in that medically trained way.
“I’d take anything, sweetling, anything you could give me. I don’t care,” he begged, heedless of the onlookers and medics. His whole being was focused on her.
As he was loaded onto a gurney to be borne away, she leaned over him, her hair dripping a red privacy curtain around them, and she placed the lightest kiss on his forehead and he yearned to reach out for more.
“If you remember this, Petyr; if any of this is real…”
“Yes?”
“We’ll do coffee.”
“At that place you like?”
“There’s never been another like it. After all, the barista knows exactly how I take it.”
“I’ll lay in a stock, then.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Littlefinger; remember the lessons of the past.”
“Always, sweetling. I don’t forget.”
“I may never forgive.”
And though it went against his nature, he let her have the last word as they loaded him up, baggage for the nearest A&E. Her smile was the last thing he saw as they closed the doors behind them.