good dirt | arya stark

twelve: explain your crimes

   Petyr Baelish stood there, looking on at Arya Stark in the middle of the room and the red haired Sansa Stark, a girl who grew to be as fierce as her mother. She sat next to Brandon Stark who had a few other lords next to him on his other side, and the seat in the middle next to her was empty. He was proud of what she had become. What he had made her.

"You stand accused of murder. You stand accused of treason." Sansa Stark's voice was loud and clear as it rang out through the stone of the room, her eyes boring right inro Arya's. "How do you answer these charges..." she looked right towards Lord Petyr Baelish, her eyes ruthless. "Lord Baelish?"

Sansa watched him stiffen. He was silent as he looked around, as if his name wasn't Lord Baelish. The room was full of tension as they all pinned their glares onto the ratty man.

The silence was answered by Arya Stark, who now looked rather smug. "My sister asked you a question."

He cleared his throat, his face rather shocked. "Lady Sansa," he started, looking around and trying to figure out what was really happening. "Forgive me, I'm a bit confused."

She leans forward, her face of pseudo confusion mocking him. "Which charges confuse you? Let's start with the simplest one. You murdered our Aunt, Lysa Arryn. You pushed her through the moon door and watched her fall, do you deny it?"

His face turned into a grimace. "I did it to protect you."

"You did it to take power in the Vale." Sansa corrected with conviction. "Earlier, You conspired to murder Jon Arryn. You gave Lysa Tears of Lys to poison him, do you deny it?"

Suddenly, he was in the middle of the room, right in the hot seat. "Whatever your aunt might have told you, she was a troubled woman. She imagined enemies everywhere."

Sansa was hearing none of it as she kept continuing, kept the accusations going. "You had Aunt Lysa send a letter to our parents telling them it was the Lannisters who murdered Jon Arryn when it was you. The conflict between the Starks and the Lannisters, it was you who started it. Do you deny it?"

Immediately, he was making up something to say, making up a little lie to cover a big one. One that had previously toppled all of the Realm. "I know of no such letter."

"You conspired with Cersei Lannister and Joffrey Baratheon to betray our father Ned Stark. Thanks to your treachery, he was imprisoned and later executed on false charges of treason. Do you deny it?"

He was beginning to feel cornered. Angry, trapped. The mockingbird was finally in a cage, and he was beating his little wings in a flighty, pitiful panic. "I deny it. None of you was there." The doors swung open, and the panicked Baelish turned around with everyone else, and to his relief it was not an executioner. But it may as well have been.

Irene Tyrell walked in, her eyes hard and cold, her dress the exact opposite. Red roses and gray ones all alike came together and made an elegant dress, one that was fit for a Tyrell. She was beautiful, but she was vindictive and her target was right there in front of her. She watched Petyr Baelish's shoulders slump in realization and relished in it, even if it was slight. She was the personification of justice for those he had wronged, the bane of his existence haunting him, finally catching him today.

It was silent as she walked slowly, dramatically even, past Petyr Baelish, hardly casting him a look and moving like water up to the table Sansa and Bran were seated at, sitting in the empty chair next to Lady Stark. It was then that she looked at him, her face blank.

"You held a knife to his throat." Brandon Stark said, breaking the tense silence. The mockingbird tightened his chest, and it seemed that he knew where this was going. "'I did warn you not to trust me', you said."