Knee Socks and Favors

Chapter 3 - Careless

With Baelish creeping around the Stark estate, it was difficult for Rosie to completely relax. Her mother and father had kindly offered to house the shifty man during his lengthy two-week visit to Winterfell, leaving Rosie on edge in her own home. After the awkward dinner on the night of her brother Robb's return, Rosie had been avoiding Baelish at any cost, going to extreme lengths including diving out of the kitchen with an arm full of granola bars and even taking refuge in a pile of napping pups. Lady had not been very keen on sharing her plush bed with the less-than-stealthy Stark.

Today was no different—Rosie was on a mission to avoid any and ideally all encounters with Baelish. And so she stood in the doorframe of her room, vigilantly peering out to scan the hallway for any unsavory trace of Baelish. The coast was clear. Popping out of her room, the auburn-haired girl quickly ambled to the barred ledge of the staircase to peer down into the far kitchen. Satisfied with no signs of the man, Rosie sighed before relaxing and sleepily trooping down the stairs to get her much-deserved breakfast. It was currently very early in the morning and nobody with the exception of Jon—who went on early runs with Ghost—would likely be awake. Hopefully Baelish slept like a normal human being.

As quietly as possible, she crossed the empty space towards the kitchen, ducking as she passed the windowed sliding doors to the dining room. She could not be too careful; the dining room had always been Baelish's territory during his visits. He liked to conduct sparsely worded "business" calls and sort through suspicious amounts of paperwork at the long dining table in there. She blushed, remembering her embarrassing encounter with Baelish on the first day of his visit. Never again would she romp around in any dining room until the snake was gone from Winterfell for good. She was not up for childishly crawling under any more dining tables in search of toy swords while he was lurking about.

Moving past the closed-off dining room, Rosie huffed as she stood from her crouched position and adjusted her pajama shorts which had essentially given her a wedgie, finally glad to have made it to the relative safety of the kitchen. She sighed, knowing her avoidance of Baelish was borderline manic, but the very fact that he had given her a necklace which he quite obviously had custom-made for her made her feel sick. Baelish was sly, and to slip under the radar of her normally watchful parents made him all the more a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps the gift was a token of goodwill, to get her in his pocket just like the rest of the Stark family. Or perhaps the necklace had a more sinister meaning, to lure her into his web of underhanded business and various other deceptive dealings. Rosie wanted no part of Baelish and his schemes...What if he-

"What are you doing up so early?"

Rosie jumped at the soft voice, clutching her chest with a silent gasp and turning to see a familiar untamed mane of black hair, the likes of which not even a hair elastic could fully contain.

"Jon, you scared the living shit out of me!" She hissed in a whisper, catching sight of a panting white mass of fur at her brother's side—Ghost. Jon chuckled faintly at his jumpy sibling.

"I'm not the one who's sneaking about," Jon gestured with a nod towards the dining room, a knowing smile crossing his perspiring face. The girl blushed—he and Ghost had likely seen her ungraceful crab-walk past the dining room. Hopefully she hadn't scarred the pair with the sight of her sad attempt at stealth.

"Please don't tell anyone about this, okay?" She sighed, knowing she would never hear the end of it from her parents. They would scold her for being "rude to Petyr" or being "unwelcoming towards a guest". Rosie snorted at the thought. Her own mother didn't even fully welcome Jon's presence in his own home, why wasn't she allowed to hate Baelish's guts?