Two Graves
Title: Two Graves
Rating: PG
Words: 703
Spoilers: s1
Summary: For this prompt at the ASOIAF/Game of Thrones meme. Sansa pushes Joffrey off the ledge.
One
It is done. Splayed on the stones below her. Screaming. Crimson in his golden hair.
The sun is in her eyes. And the light flashing from armour, as they rush towards her, anger, hard shouts. Traitor.
She is swaying even before they strike her down; her vision tilts drunkenly upwards. Her father is staring blindly out over the wall. Above his head, ravens are circling.
Two
Sansa's cell is colder than anywhere she has been since first coming to the city. She closes her eyes and thinks of home; jolts awake to the sound of boots on stone flags. The queen is a pale figure in the darkness, the guards flanking her mere shadows. She is drawn up very straight and very tall.
'The king,' she says, in a voice like glass, 'is alive.'
'You must be very relieved,' Sansa says.
'The only reason you haven't yet been flayed in the streets,' the queen continues, 'is that I thought the king would like it better if I had them wait until he had recovered enough to watch.'
Sansa closes her eyes, but she can still feel Cersei's like knives on her skin. 'Is he very badly hurt?'
Nothing as dramatic as a crack in the queen's voice, but there is something, the faintest of fractures. 'I will make sure,' she says, 'that you are hurt a thousand times worse.'
Four
Sansa's hands are pale and delicate, slender-fingered like her mother's. She would never have thought they could do something like this. Arya might have, with her archery and her small seething anger, but Sansa can't remember that she has ever had blood on her hands before.
She remembers a sobbing man who had his tongue cut out to keep his, and thinks that if even one more can escape such a fate then it will not have been for nothing. She hopes with all her heart that it will not have been for nothing, that someone will have been reprieved by her treason. She has little enough hope left for herself.
Six
She opens her eyes on the sixth night - or the seventh morning, she isn't sure - and a guard is standing outside her cell, a stocky tough-looking man with hard eyes. He pushes bread and a jug of water through the bars.
'Thank you,' Sansa says. Her voice sounds weak, almost muffled, even to her own ears. Every one of her bones is in quiet torment, the dull ache of a stone floor for a bed.
'The king is dead, of this morning,' the man says quietly, his words a quick practised rhythm like a series of drumbeats. 'The Lannisters' armies are falling and your brother is marching for King's Landing. The queen has called your execution for tomorrow.'
'What?' Sansa shakes her head. 'Why - ?'
The man only jingles a handful of coins in his pocket, turns on his heel and is gone.
Seven
All the silent eyes are weighing on her shoulders, all the pressing hush of the crowd as she steps out into the sun: the Stark girl, pale and meek, who killed their king. For all Cersei's talk of flaying, and all the long nights in her cell when Sansa dreaded much worse, it seems she is to follow in her father's way. She pictures her own head over the gates of King's Landing, her own hair a flame moving in the light wind, and feels dizzy. Robb will have to see it when he rides in victorious.
He will know what his sister died for, and be proud, Sansa thinks. She steps forward, kneels before the block. Doesn't bother with a prayer.
Cersei Lannister's voice is a fragile thing, already half-shattered; her younger son will be crowned tomorrow, although winter is coming and there are few who believe that this king will reign longer than the last. Her eyes are fixed on Sansa with a towering impotent fury. 'Do it,' she calls. Sharp words, Sansa thinks. Broken glass.
A few strands of hair flutter over her neck, a light touch like the soft prelude of a song. In the distance, she thinks, she hears a wolf howl. 'Yes,' Sansa murmurs. 'Do it now.'