Later, in the hall of the small court behind steepled fingers, Tywin regards Joffrey coolly. "Dismissing the Stark girl was a mistake. We do not need them as enemies, and now all the court knows you can be defied."
"She mocked me." Joffrey's lips twist. "I should've taken her head for it and sent that back north instead."
"That would be a fool thing to do. Do you want to be known as the second coming of mad king Aerys?" Twin tilts his head to the side. "You're a vain, callow child, and we are blessed by the seven that the realm at large does not know it. Do not tempt them."
"You can't speak to me like that," Joffrey's face purples, and for a moment his head seems to swell like a bladder about to burst. "I am the king. The king! Do you understand? My word is law. You're just a toothless, doddering old man. So long as you wear that chain you're my Hand, and you'll wipe my shit if I tell you to."
"As you say, your grace," Tywin answers, and the chill in his voice cuts to the bone. "But I wear that chain no longer."
Joffrey sputters as Twyin reaches up and lifts the chain of interlocking hands around his neck, drops it to the table with a clatter. He leaves the hall as Joffrey finds his voice and screams at him to return or lose his head.
The news of Tywin's departure spreads through King's Landing like wildfire. If before the whispers of Joffrey's cruelty were faint, now they are an ever present buzz through the halls of the Red Keep. To Jon it means little. His days are still spent standing silent behind Joffrey watching as he sits the iron throne and makes a mockery of being king, his only joy taken when one of the throne's hundred blades cuts Joffrey, leaves a thin red line across his arm or hand or leg.
As half brother to the queen Barristan gives Jon the duty of standing guard over Sansa much of the time. Often she is in the company of the lords and ladies of court, the gracious and graceful lady she was born to be, and Jon begins to notice things he never had before: the compliments she gives to even the lowest ladies, the tilt of her head to show those who are speaking she is listening, the way she can draw a smile from even the most taciturn lord.
Foolish, Jon has always thought the gossip of court, but standing silent behind Sansa he learns of how fat Lolly's mother was desperate for her to find a husband, how the ebon skinned Jalabhar Xho thought he'd finally found an ally in the Tyrells to help him win back the Summer Isles, how lady Taena thought her husband a fool but would do anything for her son, how the Kettleblacks spoke only to those who could make it worth their while, how tall lord Blackwood was hoping the king would rule in his favor in his feud with the Brackens.
"How do you remember it all?" Jon asks one day when it is only the two of them in her chambers, Sansa sitting beside the window sowing and he leaning against the wall beside the door. "It makes my head hurt."
"A knight has his battlefield, a lady hers." Sansa shrugs as she draws tight the thread of the needle between her fingers. "Mother used to tell me that."
Jon chews her words. Was it so different from being a bastard, in a way? As a child he'd learned to always be watchful of others: to know when Catelyn was close, when lords were visiting Winterfell, when to slink away so he didn't embarrass his lord father, to say Lord Stark in place of father.
"Do you ever wonder what it would've been like?" Sansa says, and Jon looks to find her gazing out the window, breeze playing with the red strays of her hair. "If we never left Winterfell?"
Jon is silent a long moment. "Sometimes," he admits eventually. "I would've gone to the Wall. I'd planned to before Bran fell, but father forbade it."
A frown creases Sansa's brow, and she glances up at him. "I never knew that."
"I only ever told father and uncle Benjen. And Arya."
"You would truly have given up taking a wife or inheriting lands even then?"
Jon smiles faintly, the expression tinged with bitterness. "What lands? A bastard has no lands to inherit, no more than he has a home to call his own."
Sansa draws back as if stung. "And Winterfell?" Her voice is hot. "How can you not think of it as home?"
"I love Winterfell." The words hurt to say, even here, even now. "But no bastard is ever truly welcome among his father's trueborn family. Your lady mother never let me forget that."
Sansa blinks and looks away, out to the window. For a moment she looks so like a maiden from a song waiting in her tower for some brave knight to come save her that it cuts Jon to the bone. "And you?" He asks to take some of the sting from his words. "What would you have done if we never left Winterfell?"
"Married some lord." Sansa laughs, but it is a wistful sound. "A fat old man, no doubt, but I would've been a dutiful wife and born him a half dozen strong sons all the same."
Jon shakes his head. He forces his voice light. "No, you would have married some tall handsome lord. Father would never have made you marry someone you hated for duty."
"He wouldn't need to." Sansa looks away from the window, eyes seeking out his, so sharp and pressing and blue that Jon wonders how he could've ever found them distant. "You are a Stark, Jon," she says softly, "or you would not wear that cloak."
The first time Joffrey strikes Sansa the bruise mottles the side of her collarbone round as the pit of a peach, a day old by the time Jon sees it. He frowns when he does, the crease of his forehead deepening as Sansa glances at him, then away. "What happened?" He asks.
Sansa refuses to meet his gaze. Her hands fiddle with a piece of embroidery, turning the silk between her fingers. "I displeased His Grace."
"Joffrey did this?"
Still Sansa refuses to meet his gaze, but she is a Stark and lying has never been their way. "I made him wroth."
The words fill Jon white hot. He is across the room in a heartbeat, kneeling before where she sits and unsheathing his sword with a long low rasp steel. "Ask," he says, voice cool, "ask and Joffrey dies. Today. This very hour. Ask and I will do it, I swear it by the old gods and the new."
Sansa's eyes meet his for a moment, trapped and distant, and then she is looking to her embroidery again. "And have you tortured and killed?" Her voice is soft. "He is the king, Jon. You know that well as I."
"I don't care."
"I do." Sansa tilts her head to the side, only the tremble of her fingers as she takes up her needle and begins again her embroidery betraying the forced lightness of her voice. "I'll be more careful, that's all. I will. He won't do it again."
Jon clenches his jaw till it aches, but all he can do is stand and shove his sword back in its scabbard. "If he does it again I'll kill him," he says, but even to him the words ring weak. You swore a vow. But which? To protect the weak? To serve the king?
"He won't." Sansa finally looks up at him. She forces a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "He was only wroth."
Jon refuses to leave Sansa's side after that. Everywhere she goes he follows, a white shadow always a few steps behind her as she sews with her ladies in waiting or sits beside the king at feasts and court or kneels before the heart tree in the godswood. Even at night Jon stands before her chamber door, a white and silent sentinel.
But it is impossible to deny Joffrey his marriage rights, not unless Jon is willing to spill blood. And so though Joffrey only visits Sansa a few times each moon, Jon stands rigid during each listening to the murmur of Sansa's voice, the bark of Joffrey's; tries to ignore the creak of the bed and Joffrey's grunts, ears straining for the sound of a fist striking flesh. It never comes, but the waiting leaves Jon so ragged by morning that he moves in a half stupor the rest of the day.
The second time Joffrey strikes Sansa Jon is again not there to see it, having risen late from exhaustion. Sansa's eyes meet Jon's as he enters her chamber, and Jon knows instantly what's happened even before he glimpses the freshly risen purple-blue circle along her jaw.
"Jon-" she begins, but Jon is already turning on his heel, striding back through the halls of the Red Keep as she calls for him to come back, a dull pounding in his ears.
Barristan is with Jamie Lannister in the White Tower of the Kingsguard. Both men look up as Jon sweeps into the room. "Joffrey struck her again," he says without waiting, gaze flat on Barristan as he ignores the Kingslayer beside him. "It's there on her jaw, a bruise plain as day."
Barristan puts down the quill he was holding and glances at Jaimie in dismissal, but the Kingslayer merely smiles and leans against the chamber wall. Barristan turns his gaze to Jon. "He was wroth. His grace has been much… unsettled since Tywin gave up the handship. There are rumors of a dragon queen ruling the slave cities of the east, and the Iron Bank of Braavos is refusing to extend the crown's debt."
"They could be refusing to fuck the queen mother and I wouldn't care." Distantly, Jon knows he should pick his words with more care, but there is a well of rage in him that makes him want to grab the old knight and rattle him in his fine white armor until he understands. "He struck her, Selmy. Does that not mean anything to you as a knight? To the vows you took?"
"I know my vows." Barristan says sharply. He takes a seat at the head of the table upon which the white tome of the kingsguard sits silent and heavy. "We swore to guard the king, Jon, not judge him." He sighs and shakes his head. "But I will do what I can to see that Sansa is kept distant from his grace until his temper cools."
"Until his temper cools?" Jon whirls on his heel for the door. If he does not leave now the rage throbbing through him will consume him, have him draw his sword and then there will be no undoing what comes next. "If he strikes her again Joffrey will see just how sharp a cool temper can be. That I swear to you, Selmy."
Hundreds of steps the White Tower has, but Jon does not remember his feet touching a one as he emerges from the cool of the tower into the morning sun of the yard and stands there shaking with rage, hand gripping the hilt of the sword at his side. His fingers itch to draw it, to lash out, but there is nothing to strike but the old stone of the tower, all his hours in the practice yard useless here.
Jon does not know how long he stands like that, but soon the sound of footsteps echo behind him. He doesn't turn as Jaime Lannister ducks out from the tower. "You should take more care with your words, Snow." Jaime tilts his head up at the tower. "Some might not take as lightly as Selmy a threat against his grace's person."
"And you, Lannister?" Jon clenches his jaw. "Joffrey is your blood. Do you not have any shame for what he's done?"
Jaime shrugs and leans back against the tower wall. "He's within his royal rights."
"Royal rights?" Jon spits at the ground. "Any king that strikes a woman does not deserve the name."
"You would have unseated Robert, and Aerys before him, then?" Jaimie smiles as Jon turns to him with a scowl. "Three kings I've served, Snow, and each did the same when wroth or in his cups. Did you never wonder why my sister was absent from court for weeks at a time? Weeks is what it takes for a bruise to fade, though Robert usually took care not to strike her where it could be seen."
"You lie." Jon's hand clenches around the hilt of his sword. "My father would never have allowed such a thing."
"Allowed?" Jaime laughs, high and scornful. "Your father saw it and never raised a hand. And if noble lord Stark with his precious honor would not stop a king who am I to do different? Why should I protect his blood when he would not do the same for mine? No, bastard, I care nothing if Joffrey strikes your sister. And do not think Selmy will either. Do you know what mad king Aerys did to queen Elia, the way she would plead and shriek while Barristan stood guarding the door in his fine white cloak? They say I have shit for honor because I slew the Mad King, but all through the realm Barristan is loved for having stood silent."
Jon can do no more than stand just as silent, fists clenched, as Jaimie leaves the wall and walks away across the yard, white cloak swirling behind him.
AN: As always I've posted a preview of the next chapter on my tumblr TacitWhisky.