Short chapter, sorry. It has important details, though, I promise! :)
35. Behind the Portrait.
Ned Stark II was doing what children did best: explore every single corner of the mansion with eyes wide with wonder, even though he didn't have permission to do so. His parents had taken him with them when yet visited the Red Keep mansion. He had heard about the place many times, and he had seen it in TV and in pictures. Ned's mother had told him that they were going to leave Winterfell and they were going to move there because of his father's new job. He had been disappointed at first because he loved living in Winterfell, and he didn't really want to leave his school and his friends and everything and everyone that he knew, but now he was feeling more excited with those news. The Red Keep was impressive and beautiful, and he liked King's Landing. He would make new friends. He would discover new places. He would have a new life. Besides, it wasn't as if he could protest; his father was now the new President of the nation, and he had to live in the President's house, of course.
His mother Talisa had told him to stay in the parlor with them, but Ned had snuck away when neither his mother or his father were watching. He had walked through the hallways of the Red Keep mansion, which seemed to be very empty to him, just as many of the rooms. The Baratheon/Lannister family was moving away and they had taken away from the mansion all their belongings, leaving behind only the pieces of furniture that belonged to the mansion since forever and not to them. Soon, those empty rooms would be decorated with Stark belongings and occupied by the Stark family. Ned couldn't wait to be able to play in all those giant and luxurious rooms that looked like they were taken from a castle in a fantasy book. Winterfell was magnificent too, but it was more plain than that plain, it had less details.
His curious dark brown eyes, almost black, roamed all over the sculptures in one of the wide hallways, and he opened his mouth in awe when he saw the splendorous dining room meant to host dozens and dozens of people. He smiled when he saw the enormous and beautiful crystal almost hanging from the ceiling. The light that came through the windows reflected on the crystals and created hundreds of tiny rainbows on the red walls.
Ned decided to explore other places of the mansion, and he happened upon the office of the President. He knew it was that office because he recognized it from pictures of when his grandfather was Vice President and he had meetings with President Robert Baratheon. Ned was sure that he was definitely not supposed to enter that office, but he did it anyways. He left the door open a few inches behind him, and he walked towards the center of the office. There was a big dark mahogany desk in front of French windows that led to the back gardens of the Red Keep mansion. Ned had read somewhere that those windows were bulletproof, and so the President was safe inside his office.
Ned also knew that that office, and the entire mansion really, hadn't belonged to the President in more than a year. He knew that his aunt Sansa and her husband, his new uncle Joffrey, had been living in the mansion after his father, President Baratheon, died. Robert Baratheon was serving the third year of his second term in office when he was assassinated, and after Ned's grandfather was killed soon after and couldn't take his place as the new President, the Secretary of State Doran Martell had become the President. He should have moved to the Red Keep mansion, but he decided to leave the family of late President Baratheon in the mansion until Westeros chose a new President. Now the roles were inverted, and the President was a Stark and the Vice President was a Baratheon. Ned found it funny.
He looked at the black leader chair that was behind the desk. That was the chair were the President sat to do his job. Would his father allow him to sit there sometime and let him pretend that he was some kind of important person? Ned hoped so. Maybe he would end up being an important politician when he was older too, just like his father and grandfather; maybe one day he would become President too! A little practice on the seat of the President wouldn't be a bad thing, then.
A portrait that was hanging on the wall called his attention then. It was very big, and it was of Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark, smiling and shaking hands. They had been best friends since childhood and anyone could see it just by looking at that portrait. Ned had known both of them, and he had loved his grandfather very much. He had also known President Baratheon, and he had thought that it was a very funny man. He had been fat, and he had loved to drink wine, and he had made tons of not appropriate jokes that scandalized grandma Cat but made everyone else laugh. Ned didn't understand many of them, but some the ones he did understand were great. He missed both grandpa Ned and uncle Robert (he called everyone in the Baratheon family "uncle") very much.
Ned approached the portrait and examined it. He remembered how he had seen in many movies that there were usually things hidden behind that kind of portraits in mansions. There were sometimes letters hidden there, important documents, secret things, or even safes! Ned knew that there was a safe behind a portrait like that in Winterfell, but he didn't know of his father had anything locked inside of it. He wondered if there would be a safe behind that portrait too?
He walked over to the portrait, which was even bigger than he was and looked heavy. Ned stood on one side of the portrait and tried to move it a little bit away from the wall. He peeked inside the narrow space that was between the wall and the back of the portrait, and he smiled. There it was! A safe!
Now he was even more curious than he was before. What kind of things would be hidden inside that safe! He knew that he could never open it, but he really wanted to...
"What are you doing?" a voice behind him suddenly startled him and made him jump. He turned around and let go of the portrait, which slammed back against the wall, and he found Joffrey Baratheon standing in front of him. Ned hadn't heard him come inside the office.
"Uncle Joffrey!" he exclaimed, scared rather than excited. He was never excited to meet his uncle Joffrey. In the few times that he had met him, Joffrey had managed to give Ned the creeps.
The blond young man was looking at the young boy with one of his eyebrows raised. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and he was dressed with an expensive black suit. Ned hadn't seen his aunt Sansa's husband many times, but in all those times he had found the man to be scary. He wasn't like his father, who had been welcoming and warm and funny. Ned felt uncomfortable in his uncle's presence. Adults might think that he was being ridiculous and childish, and that was why he didn't say it to anyone, but he thought there was something dark about his uncle Joffrey, something... evil.
"I'm sorry, I was just looking," he murmured, looking down at his shoes.
"I see. And who gave you permission?" Joffrey asked him in a severe tone.
"No one," little Ned admitted. "Mom told me to stay with her and Dad in the parlor, but I didn't obey."
Joffrey realized his time of voice had been a tad too serious before, and so he softened his voice so that he did not sound so severe when he spoke again. He didn't want the boy to go complaining about him to his parents and cause him any trouble.
"That's very bad, Eddard. Good boys don't disobey their mothers, or they get punished."
Mom never punishes me, Ned thought, but he didn't say it out loud:
"I know," he said, nodding his head. "But I wasn't doing anything wrong, uncle Joffrey, I was just looking!"
He raised his head to stare at his uncle's eyes again, but he found that the man wasn't looking at him anymore. Joffrey had set his green eyes on the portrait behind of which Ned had been looking, and the boy thought there was something odd in his gaze... Suspicion, fear, nervousness, and bad intentions. It was the same look that he saw that villains had in the movies that he liked to watch.
"Why were you looking behind the portrait?" Joffrey asked. The nervousness that was reflected in his eyes was now present in his voice as well.
Little Eddard shrugged innocently. "I just wanted to see if there was a safe like in the movies."
"Well, now you've seen it," Joffrey said, and he forced a smile on his face. "You are a curious little boy... Now come with me to see your parents. There must be wondering where you are."
He made a quick movement of his head to signal towards the door, trying to urge Ned to move away from the portrait and walk towards the door to leave the office. There was certain urgency to his voice... Something compelled Eddard to not move and stay exactly where he was. A moment of bravery overcame him, and quite unexpectedly he said, surprising even himself:
"I don't like you."
The fake smile disappeared immediately from Joffrey's face. He stared at the kid in shock, while the boy kept staring at him with the closest thing that there could be to defiance in the eyes of a young child.
After a few seconds, the shock disappeared from Joffrey's face and was replaced by another fake smile, though he was still confused.
"What?" he asked, almost chuckling, like if he couldn't understand that a small child had said those words to him. He sounded offended too, but at the same time he sounded terribly curious. "And why not?"
Because you seem mean, Ned wanted to say, but he couldn't say that. How would he explain a thing that he could not exactly prove? Joffrey was always charming to everyone, and he was now Ned's uncle! If anyone asked him why he thought that the man was mean, he would have nothing to say other than his instinct told him that Joffrey was mean. Then no one would take him seriously ever again...
But no one would make Ned change his mind. He didn't like Joffrey. His uncle wanted a reason? He would have it.
"My uncle Theon didn't like you," he said, in a serious voice that he had almost never used in his life, other than when he was very upset or very sad. "And my uncle Theon is dead."
Why did no one see that there was something weird there?
Joffrey's smile was thin now, and it looked like he was biting his lips to keep him from saying something.
"Your uncle Theon was killed by sharks," Joffrey pointed out.
"I know."
You look like one, Ned almost said.
He found something else to say instead, another reason...
"My grandpa Ned didn't like you either," he murmured, and he lowered his gaze to the carpet beneath the mahogany desk. "He's dead too."
He felt a bit of fear and worry suddenly. Did all the people that disliked his uncle end up dead? He hoped not, he didn't want to die!
Because he was staring at the carpet, he didn't notice the way in which Joffrey's hands had turned to fists at his sides. He was clenching his hands so had that his knuckles were white and his fingernails buried themselves painfully in his palms.
"You should really go with your parents, Ned," Joffrey said, trying as hard as he could to speak with a normal and serene tone of voice.
Ned didn't say anything else, he just did as he was told. It was true, he had to go back with his parents, they must have been looking for him... Without looking at his uncle's eyes again he walked towards the door and left the office, feeling relieved to be finally away from the man's presence. He ran towards the parlor and disappeared down the hallway.
Joffrey stayed behind in the office for a couple of minutes. He closed the door of the office and locked it, and then he walked over to the portrait. He took it down from the wall and was left standing in front of the safe in the wall. He put the combination, and the safe opened, revealing a long red leather box. Joffrey took it put of the safe and held it carefully in his hands, watching it with sick admiration. Very, very slowly, he opened the box...
Inside there was a dagger. A long, wide, and thin blade with a carved ivory handle. The blade had blood stains on it, stains that Joffrey hadn't wanted to remove because they filled him with such a sick pleasure... That blade brought back memories of a night that happened more than a year ago. He could still feel the warm blood of the man on his hands, and he could hear the screams of Sansa begging him to stop reverberating in his ears...
Sweet memories for him. That blade was his trophy, his reminder that no one could stand between him and what he wanted. Not even the great Eddard Stark.
A sadistic smile twisted his expression, and he thought about what his new nephew had said to him. Ah, children were so innocent, and at the same time so wise... They could know the truth even before adults did, but they were not capable of knowing what that truth truly meant... It amused Joffrey, and still he hoped that the kid would keep his mouth shut about what his opinions about his uncle were...
He closed the box again, but he didn't put it in the safe. That wasn't his office anymore, and he had to take that knife away from there so that Robb Stark would not find it. He out it inside one of the boxes that had his things inside so that they could be taken to his new home, and then he closed the safe and hug the portrait on the wall again. Then he left the office and locked the door behind him.
He had to assist to his meeting with Robb Stark and his wife Talisa Maegyr, and welcome them to their new home... His home. He would have to say good bye to it... for the moment.
Joffrey looked at the key that he held in his hand, the key to the front gate of the Red Keep mansion. He would be giving it to Robb Stark that day, but it didn't matter, he would get it back someday.
If there was one thing that Joffrey was completely sure of, it was that he always won in the end.
Lots of SanSan in the next chapter. LOTS of it!