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The tunnels were strange and winding things. When Varys had first spoken of them, Petyr had imagined them convulsing and incomprehensible in dimension and age, not unlike the Targaryen's dragons, and his assumption hadn't been inaccurate. And each, from wide passageway to clawed-out crawlspace, connecting the network to somewhere else. It felt like staggering through the opened veins of the capital. He'd always known a city to be a living thing, strictly metaphorically, but the Keep and the hills and the surrounding area had an unexpected tangle of intestines, arteries, a greying nervous system laid into its insides, and all these years, he'd never known. Well, some rumours - but rumours he'd never put much stock in.
They'd been walking in silence for at least a half-hour, and he could only see what the candle Varys carried illuminated (a torch would be too difficult to extinguish in a hurry, should worst come to worst), he smelled the honeyed wax that some craftsman had infused with cardamom, cloves, and other spices, the notes dancing along the ancient halls with the light.
Why Varys had taken him along to keep the both of them hidden should the battle turn sour, Petyr did not fully understand.
'Perhaps I still have my uses,' he contemplated, and decided he liked the idea.
All things considered, one could do worse in life than to find themselves useful to a spider.
By strict logic - to say, Varys had only brought him here - he was possibly even quite useful.
A flattering thought.
"A shame the tunnels are so deep - I doubt we'll hear the steel. Or the shouts. Or the bells, should they ring."
"Sometimes I do wonder why you find such strange delight in people twisting their conscience until they can only see each other as flesh, although I suppose that is partially, but less violently, at least one of the foundations of your enterprises."
Varys sighed slightly, which would've gone unheard, were they not in the silent belly of the land.
He looked at Baelish, whose measure he'd been so sure he'd taken years ago. At first glance a careful man, cruel sometimes, selfish habitually, but a steady player with unwavering hands. In the near dark, without distractions, he saw clearer. Two masks. One unassuming but amicable - the court serf, the whoremonger, everyone's friend, of true interest to no one. The other callous and with a wicked sort of disinterest - a clever little act, even Varys had to admit - too frustrating or abhorrent to look at more closely.
Somewhere - in a glance, the slight uncertainty of a smile, the faint grip of the stonework as he touched the walls, the way he fell easily into making himself small, were the first glimpses of Petyr Baelish proper. Never free of that unsteadiness, always that instinct to duck away from sincerity, too stubborn, too wounded, too hungry, a small thing still hiding its limp years after the injury.
"You weren't there. You'll never know how fortunate you are, not having been a witness to it. The bells are a loathsome thing, and this artless and unmeasured scramble for kingship over and over again from all sides sickens me with its impotence." A pause. Varys seemed to contemplate his words. "I do apologise but - you do realise it was inevitable? Do not misread my meaning; your play was bold, and I admire the flexibility inherent in your method. Yet if it hadn't been you it would've been someone else, intentionally or unintentionally."
"And yet here we are."
"Mm. They desired a reason they dared not admit wanting. You sold them what they so desperately yearned for. It's more than a little appropriate."
"I've pleasured countless men and women across the Seven Kingdoms now? Is that the suggestion?" Petyr let out a brief, soft laugh. "I wasn't aware. I daresay I've outdone myself, then."
No scoff, no sign of frustration. Varys was impossibly distant for one so close. Unreadable, but not by his usual means of softness or gentle tones.
Maybe they were near the harbour, maybe Petyr was only imagining it, but he could swear he could smell the seawater. He thought of the ocean that bore down endlessly against the Fingers, and he thought of those raw and unfettered waves that rushed to meet the land, and he didn't miss home, never had, but felt the memories of the waters rush up through his knuckles when he let them brush Varys' jaw, and he felt the tide sweep his body forward, and his own thoughts away, and all he could do was kiss him, smiling, a wave-crest smile and a kiss that teased the corner of the mouth, and the lower lip, measuring the response. He wasn't entirely sure what he was thinking. Very potentially, he wasn't thinking much at all, it was all sensations without a sense of dismissal. He tried to think of a good reason why he had felt compelled. It had come as easy as breathing. It had felt like the most natural thing. The most truthful thing.
It wasn't that he was a stranger to the truth.
It had simply rarely served him well.
Varys hadn't reacted notably, but then neither made a habit of judging openly.
"Anything could change overnight, anything and everything," said Petyr, feeling his breath catch at the thought.
Day breaking over the ruins of everything he'd ever hated, and maybe a few things he'd loved, too, bittersweet; even his hurried fantasies were never a shining paradise. He leaned forward, palms resting in the silk of the robes, another kiss, livelier this time, drunk with the thought, and his teeth flashed when he interrupted it.
"Don't tell me you don't see the appeal. There'll be a lot fewer Baratheons come dawn, and a lot fewer Lannisters, too. Maybe one dead king. Maybe two."
And then he felt Varys pull away from him, not a sudden movement, no rebuke, no revulsion, not even judgement. It was a slight shift, and then he was still, not unreadable, if anything, more human, but strange all the same.
"And a lot less smallfolk, and a lot more fire, and a new king to pretend this was all very noble and necessary, and in time all the lords and ladies who want to stay in his good graces will nod and agree, and pretend to have forgotten the smell of the blood and the taste of ashes in the air, and once again, we'll return."
He considered Baelish, who had first blinked perplexed at the end to the flirtations, but was now watching with a sincere interest Varys rarely ever saw on the man. He'd liked said interest. Enjoyed it.
Sometimes he saw more humanity in that interest than Baelish himself did, even in the man's undying adoration for a woman who was, by nature and nurture, incapable of returning the affection, even if she wanted to. Other times she was somehow far from his friend's heart and mind again, and they knew each other better.
He thought of Illyrio and the years it had taken before they'd become so truly inseparable. There'd been no particular point in time he could gesture to and say, "this is where I was no longer alone", or, "this is where I trusted him implicitly", and likewise here. Not that he trusted Baelish, who bristled at such sentiment (and anyway had not yet earned it), but to stand in the sunken tunnels and not be alone, it was . . .
It was terrible timing, for one. He tilted his head slightly, as close to shaking off a thought as he permitted his presentation of self tonight.
"I want a better world. A kinder world. I understand its limitations, but I refuse to leave it untouched and unchanged. You can, in your cynicism, find it ridiculous all you like, who am I to tell you how to feel? But I'm not ashamed to reiterate what everyone already knows: that I was born as small as conceivable, not even my existence belonged to me, there was nothing. Too small, too, to work the docks or the fields. Too irrelevant to serve a household."
"Mummers," Baelish said, his voice low, and he stood, watching quietly. Among those with enough interest and trustworthy informants, this was hardly a secret.
"I was fortunate. Not all small things find such luck."
"Luck?" Baelish echoed. "Surely you don't call what was done to you --"
"But I do," Varys replied, without hesitation. "Where would I be otherwise? Still a mummer of Essos, one of hundreds, still at the whim of others? It's useless to ponder, what was done was done, and I became what I became, and we are where we are. But, Lord Baelish --"
"Do stop. I like to think you've tasted me enough for your tongue to know my name. At least in private."
Varys smiled, lightly. Baelish - well, Petyr - wasn't really vexed, simply tired of the back-and-forth. And maybe a little demanding.
"Very well, old friend," he replied, relishing at least a little the man's frustration. "What was done to me was depraved and almost killed me, but there's no undoing it, only picking one's self up again and living in spite of it. And after all, if circumstances had been kinder to me that day, we would have never met. Decidedly a loss, I'm sure you'd agree."
Petyr gave a small shrug and something that resembled a nod.
"I'm no fool," said Varys. "I don't dream of some flawless gilded kingdom of saints. Only a world where one's simple dignity and merit is not determined by birth. No more, no less."
"And you think I want the same."
At this, Varys finally scoffed. "Of course not, what do you take me for? But for now, our steps align enough, it would be unwise to dismiss your efforts."
For a long while, neither said anything at all. Petyr felt something that was almost shame, but he was half-eaten by his own ambitions and the cynicism Varys had been correct in assuming to leap up his spine in response.
A world with good kings and content subjects, no bells and no wars.
'You've not let go of as much of yourself as think,' he wanted to say. 'My friend, you're thinking of mummers' tales.'
But then, it would be folly to disregard the quiet beauty of a spider's weavings. Once complete, he had little doubt they would still ensnare the world, even if they could not change it.
He watched Varys find a smooth piece of natural rock that construction of this stretch of tunnel had not cleared, more than a seat, not quite a bench. Petyr tried to imagine what the siege of the city must have looked like, all those years ago - countless doomed if the gates had stayed shut, countless more because they hadn't - and Varys, at least in this light, looked as though he could think of little else.
A spider had no business looking so mournful.
He followed, finding some space left on the rock, with little choice but to lean slightly against Varys, who said nothing. There was the inevitable warmth of body heat and the smell of dry flowers. He wanted to smile, but for once felt like it wasn't the time.
More notably, he wanted to say something - anything, really. Reiterate. Apologise. Commiserate. He was so good with words, wasn't he? Supposedly, but they also had a vicious tendency to fail him at the worst moments. There was something, some damnably obvious thing to say - but it didn't come to mind.
He exhaled in defeat. Body against body, sleep was coming easy. Easier than speaking. Easier than kissing, too, and he didn't know what that meant.
There must've be a thing, a small and quiet thing, that a ruined and eviscerated creature like himself should've told one so similar, years ago, there must've been a moment for it - but somehow, he'd missed it.