Chapter Text
A GAME OF THRONES, Chapter 67:
“After my name day feast, I'm going to raise a host and kill your brother myself. That's what I'll give you, Lady Sansa. Your brother's head."
A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, "Maybe my brother will give me your head."
Joffrey scowled. "You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord. Ser Meryn, teach her."
This time the knight grasped her beneath the jaw and held her head still as he struck her. He hit her twice, left to right, and harder, right to left. Her lip split and blood ran down her chin, to mingle with the salt of her tears.
"You shouldn't be crying all the time," Joffrey told her. "You're more pretty when you smile and laugh."
Sansa made herself smile, afraid that he would have Ser Meryn hit her again if she did not, but it was no good, the king still shook his head. "Wipe off the blood, you're all messy."
The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn't even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn't matter at all.
And she did it.
Sansa wiped the blood from her face with a delicate, white hand. The drone of detritivorous insects was so loud it was the only thing she could hear, as if they were buzzing inside her head instead of about the severed heads of her people. Sansa was still smiling when she collided into Joffrey. The King looked as though he had the wind knocked out of him. He was thrown backwards a pace and on one foot he teetered on the edge of the walk, waving his arms to regain his balance.
Sansa was jerked back from the edge from behind, just as Joffrey wheeled his arms in her direction with a look of abject panic on his paling face. She reached out to him, as a matter of course, and he snatched at her sleeve. When her sleeve ripped, she tried to shrink back into the man behind her, but Joffrey had gotten hold of her arm and as he slipped off the edge Sansa surged forward with him.
“NO,” came a frightened growl from behind that was inaudible under Sansa’s little scream. Metal slammed against the stone walk as loud as thunder, then screeched as it snagged across the stones. Sansa’s shoulders exploded as though struck by lightning. But she was no longer falling and when she looked up it was to see Sandor Clegane, his chest pressed flat against the walk, his arms draped over the edge, and his hands digging into her forearm. He had caught her and was keeping her from falling, his ugly face twisted with the effort of holding onto her as Joffrey struggled to find purchase against her body.
“Grab my legs, damn you,” Clegane roared at the other Kingsguard as he slithered further forward towards the edge of the precipice. “Pull us back!” Ser Meryn came down on his knees and grabbed at Clegane’s ankles.
Sansa struggled against Joffrey; he was hurting her as he tried to climb her body back up to the walk. He kept slipping, not strong enough to hoist himself up, and the hand that he grasped was the one slick with her blood. Then Joffrey was no longer holding onto the hand at all, but his hands had grasped onto her skirts, her thigh, her knee, until he dangled from one hand clutching onto her ankle.
Sansa looked up again at Clegane and tried to bring her other arm up and grasp onto his hands holding her. Joffrey tried to do the same with her feet and each time he did so she was jostled so much that she could not latch onto Clegane. She looked down, beyond the terrified face of the King, and saw that no one in the bailey had any clue as to what was going on. No one was looking up. Sansa looked up again and saw no face save Sandor Clegane’s and a heartbeat thudded through her entire body.
“Don’t you dare,” Clegane rasped. Had he felt her heartbeat in her arm he held? Did he know what it meant? She looked down and could see nothing but Joffrey’s absolute panic and she wonder why he was not screaming as she kicked his hand on her ankle with her other foot. “Don’t you dare,” Clegane repeated. Sansa looked back up at him, at his imploring face, sweaty and strained with the effort of holding two squirming youths up. “Don’t do it,” Clegane said, was he begging or commanding?
But now Joffrey’s hand was clamped over her slipper and Sansa, by feel alone, toed her foot out of her slipper. Clegane screamed, but not Joffrey, and Sansa wished she had not looked back down: Joffrey’s cloak fluttered like the wings of a bird, one hand still holding her slipper. His eyes and wormy lips were thrown wide open in shock. He hit the ground head first, his skull exploding.
Sansa did not remember anything after that, save for the darkness.
-end chapter one-