Warning: this chapter has some content that is not for the faint of heart (violence/abuse and some molestation).

Sansa

The room was dark. The curtains were drawn, only a thin strip of light spinning in from the space where they met, the dust swirling in the exposed light like a thin spider web. Sansa watched it from her perch on the floor, curled up into a tight ball, her knees to her chest and her heart beating hollowing within her breast. She waited, not daring to so much as breathe. When she did, it was silent, muffled, and she used her hand to cover the sound.

'I must make no noise,' she told herself as she rocked back and forth, trembling. 'Or they will remember me, and then I will be dead.'

She squeezed her eyes shut and tears leaked from them as she rocked back and forth, a low, whimpering sound escaping her throat. 'Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.'

She saw his face. Lined, so serious at times, yet so loving. His eyes were wide, and when he looked at her, she knew (though she pushed it back), she knew that he had accepted that this was the end. 'There was a disappointment there,' she thought, squeezing her eyes shut until they hurt. 'He was disappointed that I could not admit the truth to myself.'

The truth was there, though, and it revealed itself at its ugliest. How she had screamed. She still felt like she was screaming.

"NO! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T! JOFFREY PLEASE!"

BANG!

Sansa screamed, scrambling back in horror until her back hit the wall, and then there was no where to hide. Curling into a ball, she cried quietly, her gasps of fear and terror choking her. She raised a shaking hand to her mouth to silence herself. She must not make a sound. They must not remember her.

There was a crunch, and then a crash, and the door banged open. Sansa jumped, in spite of herself.

"Where are you?"

It was his voice.

Sansa pressed her hand to mouth until she thought she would push her teeth in.

"I know you're in here," his voice said softly, and Sansa shook. "Come out, come out where ever you are."

She whimpered, tears of terror running down her face.

"Stop playing with your food," growled another voice. The Hound's voice. "The poor thing's been through enough as it is."

"It's her damn fault," his voice said, sounding annoyed. "Enough of this. Find her."

Sansa heard the sound of boots against carpet, and then the windows were yanked open, and she was blinded by light.

"Got you," a gruff voice said, and Sansa felt herself being yanked to her feet.

"No," she sobbed. "Please! Leave me alone! Please."

The last part was such a whimpering pity that she felt sure that it had reached Joffrey's heart. 'I loved him,' she thought to herself, 'he loved me. I know it. He must have. He MUST.'

"You look horrible," Joffrey said, sounding disappointed and revolted.

"You beat me," Sansa heard herself say, but it sounded like another person. Arya. Someone who had fire; while the real Sansa, the stupid Sansa, sat huddled and afraid. "But that wouldn't be fair, would it? You would never have the guts."

She screamed as the man that was holding her, back-handed her, and she crashed to the ground, gasping in pain, blood pooling anew in her mouth.

"You would dare insult Joffrey?" the thug cried. "When you know who he is?"

"Enough," Joffrey snapped, sounding bored. "Get up."

Sansa did not. She merely shook.

"I said GET UP!" He screamed, changing from bored to deranged in a matter of seconds. It was Sansa's terror that wrenched her to her feet.

"This will not do, this will not do, this will not do!" Joffrey said, pacing, and Sansa noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. "I hate you like this! Ugly! I like you pretty! You must be pretty!"

Sansa had nothing to say to this. Her head ached and her heart ached and she ached body and soul and she cared not for how Joffrey liked her. She wished he would get it over with. Stick a pistol to her head and shoot her.

"Change," Joffrey said. "I want you to change. I don't want to look at you when you're sniveling."

"I want to go home," Sansa heard herself say in a low voice. "Please take me home."

"You want to go home?" Joffrey asked with a crazed laugh. "You want to go home? This is your home you stupid girl! And when you're eighteen, and able to legally marry me, we will, and I'll take Winterfell for myself!"

Sansa was so horrified she couldn't breathe.

"You can't!" She cried. "You can't! You can't! I won't let you touch me!"

"Hold her still," Joffrey commanded, and Sansa screamed and shouted as guards rushed forward and grabbed her arms back, forcing her so that she could not move but an inch, no matter how hard she wrenched.

Slowly, effortlessly, Joffrey strode forward as she wrenched, her teeth gritted and her breath coming out in desperate, furious spurts. Every step he took towards her, her breathing escalated until he was but an inch from her.

"Hold up her head," Joffrey said softly, and Sansa's head was forced up as she whimpered and struggled.

"No! Please don't-"

Worthless words. Joffrey laughed at her struggle as he slid his hand over her breast. Sansa closed her eyes and tried to picture Winterfell, but the trees and her family and their faces were lost to her as she felt his hand slide up her shirt.

"Stop!" She cried, tears leaking from her eyes. 'Oh gods please make him stop.'

"What's this?" Joffrey breathed low in her ear. "I thought you said you wouldn't let me touch you."

Sansa closed her eyes and squeezed them shut. Robb. He had a nice face and thick, curly auburn hair that almost spilled into his eyes, eyes that always smiled when he did. Jon. She hated that she ever called him her half brother. She hated even more that she had ever called him a bastard. Arya. Her, wild, tangly hair and her messy hands and face. Always getting into trouble, but when she smiled, there was something wildly freeing about the way Arya smiled. Bran. Could climb anything. To hear him whoop from the tallest tree in Winterfell, while Sansa couldn't even climb up to the first branch... But he would never climb again. Rickon. Her baby brother, his face still retaining some of the youthful look of a little child. His round, loopy grin. 'Love was all we ever knew. What I wouldn't give to have them all back with me now.'

Joffrey's hand slid lower.

"That's enough," the Hound rasped.

"It's enough when I say it's enough," Joffrey snapped, but Sansa felt his slimy hands remove themselves from her skin. She felt the air rush into her lungs in shutters. She hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath. "Bathe yourself. Make yourself pretty, and then I'll be back."

Sansa felt the hands release her and she slid to the floor, utterly drained. She watched them all walk out, and then the Hound turned, and threw her a strange look. The door slammed closed behind him.

Sansa did not cry as she lifted herself to her feet. She did not cry when she scrubbed every particle of Joffrey's oozing touch off her skin. She did not cry when she stepped from the tub, raw and busied. Or when she dressed, putting on the pearls that Joffrey had given her. Not even then did a single tear fall down her face.

She put make-up over her bruised face, but it did not hide the cuts, and the purple of the bruises showed under the powder of the make-up. She stared at her face, long and hard, as if trying to find herself. But she was lost. The person staring back at her wasn't Sansa Stark. She was nobody.

"Stupid," Sansa heard herself say aloud. "STUPID!"

She threw the bottle of make-up across the room and it hit the wall, shattering, the bronze liquid slowly dripping down against the beautiful white and gold wall paper. The make-up was a facade, just like everything else. It tried to hide the ugliness that was really going on underneath. She had just been too stupid to see.

A little girl in love with the idea of being in love. She had loved a monster.

Sansa waited patiently, with her hands folded neatly on her knees. They came for her soon enough, and Joffrey had sighed, looking her up and down, and he had licked his lips, as if he liked what he saw, but when he looked upon her face, and the bruises there, he scowled.

"It's better," he snapped reluctantly, and he jerked his head, silently ordering Sansa to come along. She did as she was told.

She followed Joffrey out of her room and into the hallway that wrapped around the upper half of the building, looking down on the casino below them. It was empty now, and Sansa wondered what time it was. Probably some early hour. She had lost track of time. There was no time in the dark.

She followed Joffrey down the wide, curving stairs, her footsteps muffled by thick red carpet. The sun streamed in from the domed window above them. Sansa watched the dust swirl as she walked past, weaving in and out of impeccably kept gaming tables, plush chairs and perfectly arranged potted plants. The red carpet stretched out over the floor, and made a brilliant contrast against the white and cold columns that bordered the casino. When she looked towards the wall, the one that usually housed a huge, monstrous portrait of the Baratheon family and a head of a stag, she saw it curiously empty.

'Robert Baratheon's not even cold in his grave and they're already taking him away,' Sansa thought, staring at the blank wall as she passed. 'Soon it will be like he never even existed. Just like my father.'

But she knew, staring ahead as Joffrey walked from the casino, took a sharp left and then strolled down the corridor towards the door that would lead them to the Pit, that her father would never be forgotten. He would always exist, in her heart, and in her family's. 'Where ever they are. If they are even still alive.'

Robb was still alive, Sansa knew. That's why Joffrey had ordered her to be beaten earlier. Robb had rebelled against Joffrey and what he had done to their father. 'You can't bite a wolf without expecting to get one back.' Now he was taking what used to be Baratheon territory, busting strongholds full of cash and taking out drug dealers that now worked for Joffrey. Slowly, carefully, he was moving South. 'Please let him come,' Sansa thought as they walked down the stairs, the cold rising in her skin as they descended underground. 'Let him come and take me home.'

Joffrey flicked on the lights, and the Pit was illuminated. Sansa had found it exciting when she first saw it, with the boxing ring and the stands where Robert and Cersei, beautiful perfect Cersei, had sat only a few nights before. It seemed like years. Maybe it had been. Sansa couldn't remember the way in which things had happened. Her head hurt.

They walked past the ring and the stands where she had cheered and cried and gripped her seat in perfect agony. She remembered feeling so dangerously glamorous, and that's what she had always wanted to be. Dangerously glamorous. 'Only there's nothing glamorous about danger.' She knew that now too.

There was a door, and another set of stairs, and everything was starting to look scary now. The lights flickered. There was a sound of dripping. The cement walls felt cool and deadly against her fingers. She wondered if he was leading her to die.

Then he opened one more door.

The room was cold, so cold. The walls were some sort of metal, and Sansa could see herself reflected and distorted in them. The cold from the floor crept up her ankles as she blinked, her eyes adjusting to the florescent blue lights that hummed an eerie tune. But it was the ice boxes lined in the center of the room that turned her blood to ice.

"Don't-"

Smiling, Joffrey opened the first and Sansa took a great, shuttering breath, her throat closing so tight that she could not breathe. Dad.

His beard was dusted with frost and his skin was a strange blue-flesh color, but it was him. It was him, lying there, in the ice box, dead. There, but gone, the bullet hole in his head cracked with iced blood.

"Look at him," Joffrey commanded when she wrenched her head away. "Look at him! Look at all of them!"

Jory was there too, along with the rest of her fathers men. She had known them, ever since she was a little girl. They had protected him to the very end, until there was nothing to be done.

"There aren't any monsters, Sansa girl," Jory had told her once when she was very small, reaching out a ruffling her hair.

But the monsters had gotten him in the end.

"No please-"

Joffrey grabbed her face and forced it to look at Ned's shrunken body, cold and unmoving. The more Sansa stared, the more it blurred into nothing, her eyes unfocused and dazed. That's when she realized that she could look at him without seeing him.

"How much longer must I look?" She asked dully after five minutes. Joffrey seemed put out.

"As long as I say!" He snapped like a disappointed child.

"Whatever pleases you," Sansa said, staring without seeing.

"Look long and hard," Joffrey said, and his voice sounded like he was trying very hard to scare her. "Because next it'll be your brother's body in that ice box. How do you like the sound of that? I'll give you your brother's body to look at as long as it pleases me."

"Or maybe he'll give me yours."

Sansa had no idea where it had come from, but the words had left her mouth, and there was no taking them back. She wrenched from Joffrey's grasp and glared at him. Straight into his green-blue eyes. She did not back down.

She was back handed with such force that she stumbled backwards, and then she felt a fist hit her in the mouth, a fist covered with rings that ripped at her flesh and caused blood to rush into her mouth. Sansa gripped the side of the ice box for support, blood running down her chin in droves.

"You never learn, do you?" Joffrey said, tisking. "You Starks are all the same. Stupid and honorable. Well, where's your honor now Stark? Hmm?"

Sansa looked up at him, shaking. 'Gone,' she thought. 'Because I'm waiting. I'll wait forever if I have to, but one day, when I get the chance, I will kill you, and I won't even think about my honor then.