28. Election Day.

Sansa had never seen Joffrey so nervous and restless. He was walking up and down the room, muttering things under his breath. He had dark circles under his eyes, product of a sleepless night. Sansa shared a room and a bed with him (though the only thing that they did in it was sleep, thank God,) and she had felt him tossing and turning around the entire night. After he had realized he wouldn't get a single minute of sleep that night, Joffrey had left the bed to drink a glass of scotch and smoke a cigar that would help calm him, and he hadn't returned to the bedroom until the next morning. In nights like that, when Sansa was left alone in the bed, she usually had wonderful nights full of pleasant dreams that helped her rest, but she also couldn't sleep that night. How could she sleep, when the next morning were the elections? She had dreaded that day almost as much as she had dreaded her wedding day. The elections would determine who the next President of Westeros would be: her brother, or her husband.

Now that she though about it, either one of them winning would be a very bad thing. She wished that Renly were still alive so that he could be, and she could stop fearing what would happen when Robb or Joffrey became President. She imagined possible scenarios for both of them, and they were all bad.

Many would say that she was paranoid, but the last years had taught her that nothing good came out of Joffrey or her family being in power.

The morning had come, and with it Election Day had also arrived. Schools had been closed so that the citizens of age could go and cast their voting ballots, and hours passed by. Joffrey had had to drink lots of coffee, and he was still nervous. Whenever he was nervous he was usually in a foul mood, but not that day. Sansa knew that he was in a good mood because of the deal that he had made with her brother, which ensured that he would be at least Vice President should things go wrong for him. However, that had only been a precaution. Joffrey was confident that he was going to win the elections, but he always liked to have a plan B just in case; being Vice President was it.

They spent most of the day in the Red Keep, but when evening came Joffrey told Sansa that they had to leave. He had to go to the headquarters of his party to await for the results of the elections. The last voting ballots were cast at 8:00 pm, and at that time the voting was closed and the votes started to be counted to see the results. It was 6:00 pm when Joffrey and Sansa left the Red Keep, but time passed quickly, and by the time they arrived at the old building with classical architecture that was their destination, only an hour was left for the voting to end.

Everyone was there. Sansa didn't know most of the people, but she did recognize some people that belonged to that party. Most of them were Lannisters, and Sansa saw Tywin Lannister and Kevan Lannistdr among those people. Joffrey went to talk to them and await for the results to start arriving, though it would still be a couple hours before that started happening. Sansa left to a corner of the big room were most members of the party, and all the people in Joffrey's team for the campaign, were waiting.

She sat down on a chair next to the window and crossed her legs to be in a comfortable position. She also crossed her arms over her chest and observed all the people there. She wondered what Robb was doing. She knew that he was in the capital because he had travelled to be in the headquarters of his own party as well. She tried to picture him in her mind, and she imagined him nervous. Robb always handled his nerves more or less well. He became tense and very serious when he was nervous, and people around him could always feel it. Sansa supposed that his wife was with him, just like she had to be there with Joffrey, and she imagined Talisa as the First Lady. Then she imagine herself as First Lady, and she decided that Talisa would do it much better. Sansa preferred to be away from politics, she liked her job, she liked music and acting. She wanted to go back to doing what she liked, but if she became First Lady then it would be much more difficult to go to the recording studios and get roles in films, because she wouldn't have the time for it. She could still work on the movie that she had gotten the main role for months ago, and she would still work on her music, but it wouldn't be the same...

"What are you thinking of?" a raspy voice got her put of her thoughts. She looked to her side and found Sandor there. She smiled, happy to see him, but she realized she was smiling too much and she became serious again.

"Of nothing... I was just wondering what it would be like to be the First Lady."

"Would you like it?"

"No," Sansa said immediately, shaking her head. Then she quickly looked around to make sure that no one had heard her say that. "No, I wouldn't like it... Years ago yes, I would have loved it, but now being First Lady would be being a part of a world that I don't want to be involved with. I hate the politics in this country, and I hate what they have done to me, and to my family... I don't want to be First Lady. I just want to be Sansa, the singer."

"You can never be just Sansa, the singer," Sandor chuckled. "You are Sansa Stark. The whole world knows and admires you..."

"You see me as so differently than everyone else does," Sansa said, lowering her voice so that only he could hear her. "For you I am Sansa. Not a Stark, not a star, not a possible First Lady... Just Sansa."

"You are everything to me, Sansa," he suddenly whispered, catching her off guard.

She stared up at him stunned. Sandor had just confessed to her something so big and so meaningful in one single and simple sentence, and she didn't know how to react. He was always coarse, and rude, and rough with everyone. With everyone except her, of course, but she had never expected to hear such words coming from him. But he said them, and they were true. In that half year, Sansa had become everything to him... She had come into his life all of a sudden and unwelcome, and she had turned his world upside down, and now she was his world and there was no denying it. Not even he could deny it...

Sansa wanted to kiss him. She wouldn't even care that all those people were there, if only she didn't know how bad the consequences would be for them... So she didn't kiss him, but the way on which she looked at him was enough. He saw the way she looked at him, and Sansa could swear that she saw Sandor's grey eye shinning in a special way.

"If your brother wins, I will take you to him. You will tell him the whole truth," Sandor rasped. "He will be the most powerful man in the country, and he will be able to stop this little shit from hurting you more. Then I will take you away, anywhere you want."

"No," she quickly said, shaking her head. Sandor saw the panic that suddenly filled her eyes, and he frowned. "No, I don't want Robb to win..."

"Why not?" he wondered. "You can't possibly mean that you want Joffrey to be the fucking President."

"No, I don't want that... But you have seen what happened to Theon, and that was all just so that Joffrey could make the deal with my brother. Imagine what will happen to Robb if he wins!"

She didn't even want to think about it. All the terrible things that could happen to Robb, just like they had happened to her father, and to Theon... No, she couldn't think about it if she didn't want to go crazy.

"Nothing is going to happen to your brother," Sandor told her, trying to calm her and stop her from thinking about that. "Nothing can happen to him. There's been too many deaths, too many accidents... And all of them benefit Joffrey. How long do you think that it will be until people figure it out?"

Sandor was right, and Sansa wanted to believe him. Still, she didn't want Robb to win the elections. She wanted him as far from harm's way as possible, even if that meant having to suffer Joffrey as President.

The voting had already ended in all the cities and towns of every State, and the votes were being counted. Everybody got nervous, and Sansa and Sandor waited in their corner, forgotten by everyone else. They heard phone calls, and the sound of various TVs that only talked about the elections.

"Who do you think is going to win?" Sansa asked Sandor. He shrugged.

"I wanted your brother to win, but from the looks of it it seems like Joffrey will win. That's what everybody thinks, and I've thought so too for a while."

Sansa didn't know who was going to win. At this point she just wanted to know.

In the elections in Westeros, the candidate that got the highest number of electoral votes won. Each State had a number of electoral votes that depended on the population of that State, and the candidate that had gotten the majority of votes in that State won all the electoral votes. The States of Crownlands, the Reach, the Westernlands, the Vale, and the North all had the highest amount of electoral votes: 4. Then the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and Dorne granted 3 electoral votes. The Iron Islands only have 2 electoral votes because it was the smallest State.

From what Sansa had learned when she took a look at how things were going in each State she had gotten a pretty good idea of who was going to be the winner...

The first results came after the first forty-five minutes of waiting. Someone in the room yelled:

"Joffrey won in the Crownlands!"

There were cheers and applause, even though everyone knew that it was obvious that Joffrey was going to win in the Crownlands, the State where he was the Governor. That got him 4 electoral votes.

"Well, things are starting good," Sandor said sarcastically, and Sansa sighed.

The second results came soon after, from the Iron Islands. Robb had won. Sansa could see Joffrey grinning among all the crowd in that place, because he was still two points ahead of his opponent.

More time had to pass before more results arrived, but the results of two states arrived at the same time. Robb had won in the North. Joffrey had won in the Westernlands.

8-6. Joffrey was still winning...

Things changed when the results from the Vale came. Its 4 electoral votes were for Robb, which placed him ahead of Joffrey by 2 points. Sansa heard her husband cursing out loud among all those politicians, and she also heard Sandor whistling with amusement.

"This is getting good," she hears him murmuring under his breath, but she but her lip with worry.

"This is not good," she murmured.

"Don't worry, little bird. Your brother was lucky now. He will get the Riverlands also, but then everything else will be for Joffrey. You will be the First Lady before the night ends..."

She hated the idea, but she hoped he was right.

Robb say down on a chair, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. He had been winning for a brief time. After he won in the Vale, he received the news that he had won in the Riverlands as well. That gave him 13 points, while Joffrey still had 8. He hadn't wanted to sing victory so soon, and he had been right not to do so. Right after the victory in the Riverlands, Joffrey won in the Stormlands. That gave him 11 points...

"You are still ahead of him," one of the men in his team, Roose Bolton, told him. Robb scoffed.

"Joffrey was ahead of me before, and now he's not. Things can change, and there's still two States left..."

He knew that Dorne was going to go to Joffrey, he knew that much. All the reports said so, and the reports hadn't been wrong so far.

It all came down to the Reach. No one knew what would really happen on the Reach. The reports had said that Joffrey would win there, and then they changed and said that Robb would win, and then they changed again, and now they didn't say anything. Anything could happen, and Robb crossed his fingers and prayed that those points would go for him. If they didn't give him those four points he would be lost.

His wife Talisa saw his distress and kneeled at his side. She placed her hands on his shoulders and squeezed her fingers, massaging the tension away from him.

"Don't worry, my love," she said with her soft and soothing voice. He sighed, and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers while he closed his eyes. He had a headache.

"Sorry, I'm just nervous..." he apologized. He felt Talisa smiling.

"It's okay," she assured him. "It's normal."

He heard a phone ringing, and voices talking. And he heard worry in those voices, even though he could not hear what they were saying. Had more results arrived...?

They had. He opened his eyes and saw one of the men in his team for the campaign looking at him, pity written all over his face. Robb felt his stomach twitching painfully. He knew what the man was going to say...

"Joffrey won in the Reach," the man informed him.

There was a great and uncomfortable silence reigning over the headquarters of the party all of a sudden. You could hear a pin drop. Every single person in there was looking at Robb, who had turned as pale as a sheet of paper. There wasn't disappointment in the eyes that stared at him, just some kind of strange pity, but it was the look on the faces of people who knew that the battle was lost.

Talisa was going to speak, probably to tell him not to worry, but he didn't stay to hear it. He stood up from the chair and walked away from the room, crossing a door to another room that was next to the big one in which everyone was reunited. The smaller room (a meeting room,) was empty and allowed him to be alone while he digested the news. He wasn't going to throw a tantrum over not winning, that would be stupid. He knew that the possibility of not winning was there, and he had tried to get ready for it, but he felt very disappointed and he couldn't deny it. He had tried very hard, he had done his best to try and win the people's hearts. He wanted to get their votes not just to be their President, but to make that country a better place. That was what his father wanted to do, help make that country a better place... But he had died before it was possible. Robb had tried to win to do it for him, but he had failed...

He heard the door opening behind him, and he turned around to see his wife standing there. He sighed and allowed her to approach him.

"How are you?" she asked him, worried about him.

"I could be better," he admitted, and he tried to smile. "Well... I can't say that I'm really surprised."

"You haven't failed," she told him. She cupped his face between her hands and have him a brief and soft kiss on the lips, with proved to be very calming. "You will still be Vice President. You can help Joffrey be a very good President, and you can still make this country a better place, just like you wanted..."

"I know," he nodded. "But I wanted to do this. For my father..."

"Your father would be proud of you no matter what," Talisa told him, and Robb wanted to believe it.

He hugged her tightly, and she did the same to him. They stayed like that for a long time, they didn't know for how long, until they started hearing a lot of noise coming from the other room. They separated from each other and frowned, and they stared at the door just before it opened all of a sudden. When the door opened, Roose Bolton came in, and so did the sound of a lot of people cheering and applauding joyously. They swore they could even see people opening bottles of champagne and passing cups around.

Roose Bolton was smiling. Robb looked at him confused, not understanding what was happening.

"Roose, what...?"

"Perhaps you shouldn't have left so soon," Roose told him, answering his question. "Dorne decided to surprise us all."

Robb still didn't understand at first, mainly because of the shock. Talisa understood it before he did, and He gasped. Only then did Robb realize what that meant, and he became even paler than before. His eyes were round and wide, same as his mouth.

"What...? Do you mean...?"

Roose Bolton nodded.

"Congratulations, Mr. President."