The bright midday light that shined through the several huge windows of one of the Highgarden's tea rooms had done a lot to brighten Sansa's mood. She was very in her element here at the elegant hotel owned by Margaery's family, sipping from a porcelain cup and eating delicate pastries, surrounded by other beautiful, distinguished women. Debutante meetings were one of her favorite places in the world. It was like they were pulled straight out of one of her dreams. Although in her dreams, Arya was almost never there unless it was a nightmare, and she especially wasn't listening to metal music so loud you could hear it through her headphones while trying to see how many finger sandwiches she could stuff into her mouth at one time.

Sansa wouldn't sit by her if she could help it, but she knew if she made Arya go sit by herself, she'd tattle to father the moment he picked them up. Apparently it hurt Arya's feelings, but you couldn't tell that by looking at her. If she really wanted to spend time with Sansa, she could try to not be such a nuisance every once in a while and maybe not wipe her hands on the dress Sansa had painstakingly picked out and forced her into that morning.

She did her best to ignore her sister and focus on Margaery and her delightful cousins who had so sweetly deigned to sit with her despite the black hole that was Arya at her side. During the actual meeting they had sat with the other Tyrell women, while everyone discussed the upcoming charity events and voted on theme colors for next Sunday's brunch. Nothing too important, as the organization's biggest event, the grand ball where girls were introduced to society, was still months away. In the North, it was unusual for a girl to debut before she turned eighteen, but the South held different traditions and she was ecstatic to know she would be attending the ball in the spring being considered a young woman. It was only right as Sansa already felt like an adult, it was time everyone else started seeing her as one.

Lunch commenced with the most important things out of the way, and the girls were allowed to intermingle and chat. Sansa had brightened when Margaery had immediately come to sit with her, joined by her ever present younger cousins who tended to follow her around like little ducklings.

Sansa had actually met Margaery at her first debutante meeting in the south that summer. Her tiny, wizened grandmother was head and founder of the Southern Women's Society so Margaery took it upon herself to personally welcome every girl that joined. They'd become fast friends as Margaery was everything she could want in a sister and companion, so pretty and kind and dignified. She could go on but her real sister had begun incessantly tapping out the beat to her music on the table and it was driving her insane.

"Could you please stop that?" she whispered to Arya, so as to not draw attention to them.

Arya, who had the volume up so loud it must be doing permanent damage to her ears, couldn't hear a word she'd just said. She took out one earbud, though she kept tap, tap, tapping, on the silken tablecloth. "What?" she asked so loudly someone from another table looked over.

Sansa said nothing, just took Arya's offending hand in her own and made it lay flat against the table, patting it sternly twice to make her message clear. Arya rolled her eyes and Sansa was about to scold her for that too when she heard someone say the name that had been at the forefront of her mind since Thursday night. She quickly whipped her head towards the other girls, accidentally interrupting whatever Alla was saying. "I'm sorry, but did one of you say Joffrey?"

Margaery smiled, seemingly not put off by Sansa's rude disturbance of their conversation. "We were just talking about the whole broken phone fiasco."

"What broken phone?"

Margaery lightly smacked herself on the forehead. "Of course you don't know. You weren't there yesterday and without his phone Joff wouldn't be able to tell you. Silly me."

"Joffrey broke his phone?" she questioned. It was true she hadn't been to school yesterday. She'd woken Friday morning, hoping a good (restless) night's sleep would assuage her worries but found the pit in her stomach to still be there when she opened her eyes. The stress had apparently been bad enough to materialize physically as her father had taken one look at her pale face and the dark circles under her eyes before sending her right back to bed. Sansa usually tried hard to have perfect attendance, she was in a lot of advanced classes and it was easy to get behind, but she couldn't help but send a prayer of thanks up to the Mother for her mercy. Being able to crawl back into her pink sheets and not have to face her life was like a dream come true. It got even better, when after waking from a light doze she saw Joffrey had texted her, wanting to know where she was. She'd told him she thought she was coming down with something and he'd said he hoped she'd get better soon…and that he couldn't stop looking at her picture.

The last message had sent a flutter in her tummy that she couldn't tell was good or bad. Maybe both. Bad because she still thought sending the photo might've been a mistake. But good because Joffrey obviously enjoyed it, and of course it pleased her to know he thought she was pretty. That bad feeling slowly grew less and less as the day went on and Joffrey continued to text her. He was already being so much more talkative and attentive than usual, this had to have been a step in the right direction. She'd proven she loved him and he was meeting her there. The texts had dropped off near game time and he never responded back to her after that. She'd assumed he'd just been tired and gone right to sleep after but apparently not?

"Well, he didn't break it," Margaery said with the look of someone who had some choice gossip to share. "Now I wasn't there, this all happened in the boys' locker room before the game, but Loras told me everything."

Margaery had her full attention. It was taking everything Sansa had not to lean forward on the edge of her seat. Her cousins, though doubtlessly having heard this story before, were all turned towards Margaery as well, like flowers to the sun. She was a natural leader. Her pretty face and witty charm just made you want to hear what she had to say. Margaery, seeming to preen under all the attention, continued, "Well all the boys were around looking at something Joffrey was showing them on his phone."

"What was he showing them?" Sansa couldn't help but butt in. She knew for a fact she was being silly, that Joffrey absolutely, without a doubt, would never show anyone that picture. She couldn't help it though, her nerves had been positively fried with everything going on in her life lately.

"Hmm? Oh, I don't know. Loras didn't look. Anyway—"

"I heard," said Myranda Royce, who had apparently been listening in from the neighboring table as she invited herself over and sat in the empty seat at their group, "that it was a picture of Sansa with her tits out."

Sansa's heart dropped to the bottom of her tummy. "It was not!" proclaimed Arya too loudly and her mortification only grew to find her little sister had both headphones out and had been listening to the entire conversation.

Margaery gave Randa a reproachful look. "Why would you say something like that?"

She shrugged, unbothered, before popping a tiny cake into her mouth whole. When she finished chewing she said, "That's just what Harry Hardyng told me, and he was there."

Sansa was looking down at her hands in her lap, fiddling with her neatly manicured nails but she could feel it as the girls' eyes came back to rest on her. Feeling like she was about to be sick all over the pristine white table cloth she said, her voice almost a whisper, "I had a bra on."

She heard Myranda snort and Arya, who had yet to stop glaring at her, suddenly whipped her head back around to Sansa. "You what?"

She knew her face was on fire at this point and she felt about two inches tall. She wished she was, so she could just disappear from this whole conversation.

Margaery pressed a comforting hand to her shoulder. "It's not that bad, Sansa. Everyone knows you're a good girl."

Even Randa looked a little sympathetic. "It really isn't. Gods know I've done a lot worse." From what Sansa had heard, she had, but being compared to Randa really didn't make her feel any better. How could Joffrey do this to her? Didn't he say he loved her? He must not know the impact a picture like that could have on a girl.

Sansa could feel the paranoia creeping up on her. Randa had known and she didn't have a reputation for keeping secrets. Gods, almost the entire football team had seen it! Who else would they tell? Who else already knew in this room? Mother have mercy, Joffrey's mother and little sister were here! How could she ever look them in the eyes again, knowing they could know what she'd done?

"Are they serious, Sansa?" Arya asked, disbelieving.

Arya had a talent for making Sansa agitated even in her best moods, she really couldn't deal with her in her current state. "Arya, not right now, please?"

Margaery seemed a little antsy now that her story and spotlight had been derailed. "Do you still want to hear what happened with Joffrey's phone?"

Randa let out a boisterous peal of laughter. "Harry said he cried."

Joffrey cried? Despite feeling emotionally like an on fire garbage can, her sudden worry for Joffrey trumped her own wrecked state and she nodded to Margaery, her interest piqued.

The gleam in her eyes was back, and Margaery continued her story as if that little blip never happened. "You know that really scary coach they have? With the facial disfigurement or whatever?"

Now Sansa had obviously never died before, but she thought this is what dying must feel like. Fate seemed to be conspiring against her to make everything bad that could possibly happen to her in the shortest amount of time possible happen. The biggest stresses of her life were literally colliding in front of her eyes. Mr. Clegane was now not only following her around school, but into her weekends as well.

"I know him!" Arya blurted to Sansa's confusion.

"You do?"

"Yeah, you know when dad forced me to go to your first game and I brought Mycah along?" Sansa vaguely recalled Mycah, but Arya tended to keep a strange group of friends that she tried not to look at too closely. "Well we got bored a little ways in, and ended up sneaking off to explore. We were messing around in the locker room when he found us and started yelling."

"That doesn't sound so bad…" She didn't know why she was defending him, but it was hard to blame Mr. Clegane for scolding Arya, when in her opinion, the girl desperately needed it.

"He said he'd beat the shit out of us if we didn't go right then," Arya said, completely deadpan, to the delight of Myranda and the shock of every other girl at the table.

Sansa was about to reprimand her for the language, when Margaery plowed on with her story, seemingly tired of the interruptions. "Well he saw what was going on and absolutely flipped his lid, just started cursing and screaming at everyone. Loras said he picked Joff up off his feet by the front of his shirt."

"Oh my gods," Sansa couldn't help but whisper out loud. She was still a little put off with Joffrey, but her heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to be on the opposite end of that rage, and Mr. Clegane had never truly gotten physical with her, she couldn't even imagine how scared he must have been.

"He was shaking him and yelling, asking him if he'd sent it to anyone."

Fear flashed in a shock down Sansa's spine like being hit with a bucket of cold water. She hadn't even considered that. "Did he? Send it I mean?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't have all the details. But he let him go and took his phone and smashed it, just threw it on the floor and stomped on it until it was in a million pieces. He told Joff he was out of the game and if he didn't leave right then or if he did anything like that ever again, he'd cut him from the team. As well as a million other threats involving great bodily harm."

"Wow," Sansa said without thinking.

"I know right? Like that was way over the top."

Sansa stopped short. "What?"

"I mean it wasn't cool what Joff did," Margaery said, with a sympathetic look towards her. "But boys are just like that, you know? The coach went way too far. Obviously he's going to get fired, he can't put his hands on a student like that, but I was thinking Joff could probably press charges too." Her younger cousins nodded along, agreeing to whatever Margaery said.

Sansa was less sure. She loved Joffrey but she was burning with disbelief, and embarrassment, and anger that he would do something like this to her. The whole point was he wanted something from her only he could have, and then he went around and shared it with apparently half the stupid school.

Yes, Mr. Clegane had gone too far, but he seemed to be the only one who viewed this situation with as much seriousness as Sansa. She knew her friends were only trying to not make a big deal out of her discretion, but what about Joffrey's? Their casualness and blasé attitude rubbed her the wrong way.

"I just want to know," Randa said, laughing into her hand, "what made you think putting your face in the photo was a good idea?" The other girls around the table let out little giggles and Sansa stood up abruptly.

"Excuse me, I have to go to the lady's room," she said with as much dignity as she could muster before walking away at a normal pace, even though she wanted to run as fast as her legs could take her. "What'd I do?" she heard Myranda ask. Her eyes burned and she could feel her throat closing up. Don't cry, don't cry don't cry. Not while people can see you. She dug her nails into the meat of her palm to have something else to focus on."

After what felt like forever, she made it to the bathroom, planning to weep like a little girl the moment she was alone, but found Arya blocking the door with her hand when she went to slam it shut.

Sansa let out a most unfeminine groan, and to her horror, felt the hot slide of unchecked tears roll down her cheek. "What do you want?" Her voice cracked on the last word.

Arya, seeing that her sister was in the beginnings of a mental break down, made a quick check to see that the stalls were empty before flicking the lock on the door. "I can't believe you," she half screamed, half whispered.

"I do not need this right now, Arya. Just go away," She was really in it now, even fighting back sobs. Sansa was the type to cry at any overwelling of emotion, be it happiness or frustration, but it had been a while since she'd had a real fit. She could already feel the headache coming.

Arya was relentless though, stepping into her personal space. "Why would you do that?"

"He asked me to!" Great, now she was yelling. No one else on earth had the power to make her so over the top like this. Something about her sister just made her so irritated. "He said I would do it if I love him and I do so I did!"

"Oh, Sansa." Arya's disappointed tone made her chafe. Like she was so mature and worldly, as if she was the older sibling scolding the younger one for making a mess.

"What?" she asked, miserable. Why didn't she understand that she just wanted to be alone?

"Come here." She grabbed Sansa brusquely by the hand and though she wanted to shake her off, she found suddenly she was just so drained of energy and could do nothing more than let herself be dragged to one of the sinks lining the wall.

She looked an absolute horror. Though her sobbing fit had not been going on long, her mascara was already running and her eyes were red rimmed. They would be puffy and swollen long after she was done and everyone would know. She was about to spiral into another wave of crying when Arya pressed a paper towel soaked in cold water to her cheek, wiping away the itchy mess of tear stains on her face. "That was fucking shitty of him to do."

"Ary—"

"Don't tell me not to curse. This is literally your favorite day of the month, when you get to come to these meetings and he ruined it and made you cry. That's fucking shitty."

She had moved on to pressing the towel gently to Sansa's eyes, to hopefully calm the eventual swelling. "He didn't mean to," she argued weakly.

Arya scrunched her nose to show what she thought of that. "I hate Joffrey and his dumb face, you know that. I thought he was a right prick way before this and wondered why you couldn't see it. I think what you did was stupid, but it doesn't excuse him. And I think you should break up with that worm and let me breaking his fucking face in. But I won't give you the whole spiel, it's your life to live, no matter how bad your decisions are."

She laughed weakly. "Thanks." She stood there and let Arya wipe away the last traces of her episode for a few moments more before she said, "Could you call dad and have him come pick us up early?"

Arya nodded and pulled out her phone as she went to throw the paper towel away. "And Arya?" She turned back. "Could you not tell him what happened?"

Arya looked confused that she would even have to ask. "Of course."

Sansa made a mental note to not tattle on Arya next time she got herself into trouble, no matter how ludicrous.

And she wondered how she would thank Mr. Clegane for what he'd done for her.