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Petyr brings Alayne out and shows her off, but Sansa is kept locked away high in the ivory towers of the Eyrie.
Sansa does not mind, not really - there are terrible fates awaiting her if she descends from her sanctuary, and she has Sweetrobin here, who is becoming sweeter under her care. She has Mya, too, and Randa sometimes, and she supposes that better to be here and a little lonely than to be down there and dead.
Petyr talks about arranging a marriage for her, but she sometimes wonders if he ever truly intends on releasing her - he likes too much keeping her to himself, she knows that, she thinks everyone must know that by now, so she does not pay much heed to the talk of Harry the Heir.
Then, somehow, she meets Harry.
"My lady Alayne?" he asks, and her eyes are enormous and blue and the loveliest eyes he has ever seen, and the lamplight casts copper in her nut-brown hair. "I- I know that I am not supposed to be here, but-"
"You are Lord Hardyng?" she asks, and oh but her voice is so sweet, and Harry wonders if this is what it is to fall in love for true.
"Aye, my lady. I am Harrold. Harry. Yes."
He has never been tongue-tied before, has always found words come to him easily, but Alayne Stone, bastard daughter of a man of no importance made good by subterfuge (Lady Anya had been very insistent on that point), she has thrown him for a loop just by smiling shyly.
Her hair is piled up on the back of her head but for a few tendrils that curl darkly against the pale skin of her long, slender neck, and that somehow makes her seem younger and terribly fragile, and Harry feels as if he should offer her his sword and shield right now.
Instead, he smiles.
"It is a great pleasure to finally meet you, my lady," he insists. "Your name has echoed throughout the Vale since your father's arrival. It would be an honour if you would allow me to speak with you some."
Footsteps echo down the hallway. Harry turns in annoyance to see who it is that is interrupting them, but Alayne pushes at his arm, pushes him away.
"Tomorrow evening," she whispers. "But you must go, you must leave-"
So he leaves, as quietly as he can, and he plans how he might woo her tomorrow evening.
She lets him woo her.
Or rather, she seems unaware that he is wooing her, but she seems to enjoy his company anyways - making her laugh becomes the highlight of Harry's day, because when she sits at her father's side during the day she is remote, cool and distant and removed from everything, but in the evenings when they sit together by the fire in her solar (always hers, never his) and talk in whispers, sometimes she tilts her head back and laughs a high, sweet giggle that makes him smile in return.
He always leaves an hour before midnight lest her father catch them, but within a fortnight Harry is completely certain that he is in love with Alayne Stone and that he wants to marry her.
He does not mean to kiss her, but he does.
It is just that she is so beautiful in the firelight, her cheeks flushed pink with summerwine and her lips stained red with berry tarts, and she tastes of summer when her lips part under his.
"I- Alayne, I should not have-"
She kisses him the second time, and her father almost catches them.
"What do you want from life, sweetling?" he asks against her hair as she lies with her back to his chest, their feet stretched out towards the fire. Her gown today is the exact blue of her eyes, and the sight of her had fair stolen his breath this morning.
"Home," she whispers. "Safety, but mostly home."
"The Fingers? I was told that they were a barren sort of place - do you miss them?"
She hesitates, shoulders tensing, and then she turns her face up to his.
"The Fingers have never been my home."
"Where, then? Did you live with your mother? I thought your father-"
"He is not my father," she whispers urgently, turning to kneel between his legs, to take his face in her hands. "Harry, Littlefinger is not my father, my name is not Alayne - you must believe me."
If not Alayne, then...
"Who are you?" he asks, sitting up straight, the lovely softness of the evening gone completely. "Who?"
There is such naked terror in her eyes that he feels half afraid himself.
"Sansa," she says at last, barely more than a breath. "Sansa Stark, of Winterfell."
Knowing that her hair should be bright red and that she is rightful heir to all the lands between the Neck and the Wall (gods, rightful lady of Winterfell) does not change the fact that Harry has fallen quite thoroughly in love with Alayne- with Sansa, and so he continues to go to her every evening.
Now she tells him stories of her childhood, brothers and sister and parents who she clearly loved very much, tells him of playing in the godswood between kisses and of snowball fights in the yard as he works his hand under her skirts and kisses her neck.
She protests at first, but then one evening she says something so sad that, if she had not said it with her hand inside his breeches, would have made him draw away from her that moment and never dare lay a hand on her again.
"I will never get home," she breathes against his ear, slender fingers curling around him, "so what difference does a torn maidenhead make?"
The likelihood of an annulment, he remembers, because she told him of her Lannister husband amidst tears one night, but it is hard to worry about such things when she feels so good, so right, in his arms.
Her assertion aside, he never, ever intended on laying with her, not until he could prove that her husband was dead and could make her his.
But, Harry has never precisely been famed for his self-control, and he has never felt about another woman the way he feels about beautiful, broken Sansa Stark with her smouldering hair and her blue eyes as deep as the sea.
"I love you," he whispers when he breaks her maidenhead, the firelight glowing on their skin and in her hair and glistening on the wet pink of her mouth. "I love you, I love you-"
He leaves soon after, Lady Anya's business with Lord Baelish concluded, and he has but one last night with Sansa during which he tries to assure her that he will make everything right, that he will keep her safe and give her a home.
That is the last time he sees her for a very long while.
"The maester tells me you asked him for moon tea, sweetling," Petyr says, voice gentle and eyes diamond hard. "I cannot imagine why you should have need of such a thing, though. Surely you have not ruined yourself, my dear?"
Sansa says nothing, not knowing what she is supposed to say in the face of Petyr's not-well-enough hidden anger. She cannot imagine how angry her parents would be, knowing that she allowed Harry to dishonour her, allowed him to get a bastard on her (not a bastard, a babe, our babe, mine and Harry's, ours).
"He will not wed you now," Petyr sneers. "He has another bastard, one more will make no difference to such a fool."
Sansa does not say that Harry loves her, that she knows he loves her, wants to be with her, wants to make her his wife. She does not say that the only time she has felt truly safe since her father's death has been in Harry's arms, that the only way she can see herself happy in the future is as Harry's wife.
"You will spend some time away," he declares. "There are motherhouses in Oldtown where I am known as a generous man - they will take my shamed daughter and hide her ruin."
Sansa cannot remain silent at that, cries out in horror and jerks away from Petyr, wrapping her arms around her belly, still flat but alive, a tiny babe with her eyes and Harry's lovely soft hair already growing within her, she cannot let Petyr take her babe away from her-
"You will leave by the end of the week," he says. "You will return here when your time is over. No man will have a ruined woman, the Imp's widow, but you will return - Winterfell is still yours, regardless of your state, I suppose."
"I should be allowed keep the child," she dares to say, "if no man will be my husband. I will still need an heir."
There is a gleam in his eyes, an angry gleam that she is frightened of.
"You will leave the babe in Oldtown as I said," he tells her. "How are you to retake the North if you have a babe to look after?"
Harry returns to the Eyrie four moons after his first visit, and it is his little cousin who tells im that Alayne was bad and had to go away for a while.
His temper gets the better of him (it rarely does, but now, Sansa is gone, she is gone, how can she be gone just when he has found confirmation that the Imp is dead, how can she be gone?!) and he confronts Littlefinger.
"You've shamed the last daughter of one of the oldest Houses in Westeros," he smarms, even with Harry's forearm tight against his neck. "Who'd have you for a husband now?"
"Sansa-"
"Is safe away from you. You will not find her."
"Robert said- he said that she had to go away because she got fat," Harry forces out. "Is she with child? My child?"
"How unlike you to show concern for your children," Littlefinger sneers, his green-grey eyes flashing cold and angry. "Lady Stark would be thankful for your concern after you getting a bastard on her."
"Tell me where she is," Harry snarls, not noticing Baelish's bully boys until it is too late, until they are pulling him away. "Tell me where she is!"
"Oldtown is the second largest city in the realm," Littlefinger calls. "And you're going there blind."
Blind indeed, Harry thinks as he and Wallace leave the fifth motherhouse since they arrived in Oldtown.
"I have to find her," Harry says desperately. "I have to, Wally, I- I can't go home without her. I have to find her."
"We will," Wally assures him, even though neither one of them is sure that Lady Anya will welcome them home to Ironoaks because they went against her will to come look for Sansa. "We will, Harry, just you wait and see."
He waits and waits, and he meets more red-haired girls with big bellies than he thought there could possibly be in the realm, but none of them are his red-haired girl (would they have stripped the dye from her hair? He doesn't know, doesn't know anything, he thinks now).
He dreams about her every night, alone and frightened, heavy and round with their babe, her hair clinging to her neck and her shoulders, fire-red and nut-brown and every colour in between, her eyes so big and so frightened, like the night she told him her true name but worse, more scared.
Harry has never had to be responsible for anything before, has never wanted that, but he wants more than anything to be responsible for Sansa and their babe.
The girls in the motherhouses are expected to work for their keep, even those for whom the women running the places are being well paid to keep secret, keep hidden.
Sansa is one such girl, but because she has been so sick with her pregnancy she has only light work to do - sweeping the floor in the front room where they all eat their meals, helping a little in the kitchens, that sort of thing. She and the other girls must wear their hair bound up under tight scarves ("Vanity and pride's what brought you here, we'll soon rid you of that").
She is sweeping the floor, her back aching and her ankles so swollen they hurt, when she hears his voice.
Harry. Her Harry, looking exhausted and older than he should, his hair in disarray and his clothes travelworn.
He came for her. Petyr said he wouldn't, but he has, he is here for her, she throws aside her broom and pulls off her headscarf, not caring that her hair is red to the tops of her ears and dark brown beyond that, not caring about anything but the light in Harry's eyes.
"Take me home," she begs, burrowing against his chest as best the swell of her belly allows (six moons, six long and lonely moons, near seven) and and he holds her close, holds her tight in his arms, and promises to do just that.
Dragons come and Jon Snow is Jon Targaryen and the Lannisters and Boltons and Freys burn.
Rickon disappears in the night from White Harbour, him and his wolf and his wildling woman.
When Sansa sits in her father's seat in Winterfell, Harry stands at her side with little Brandon in his arms.
"There must always be a Stark in Winterfell," she says as they stand before the heart tree, Brandon standing unsteadily between them and holding their hands.
Brandon has Harry's hair and Sansa's eyes.
"I'd hoped he'd have your hair," Harry admits after they've put Brandon to bed later that night, their first night in Winterfell. "It was your hair that I loved first."
"Even when it was dark?"
"More so now," he admits, "but there was fire in it even when it was dark, love."
"Kissed by fire," she breathes, rolling over into his arms. "The wildlings say it's lucky."
"It has been for you," he points out. "This is as close to a happy ending as life allows, after all."