(Untitled)

[lifeisnotasong]

Joffrey is dead or very certainly dying. Sansa waits until the noise stops, she does not dignify him with her attention though she hears her name amongst his babble. She watched Joffrey die once and though she wants him dead she has no desire to do so again. She has no time for him caught in shock and panic and Eddara is crying still, shrieking.

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[starkhand]

Ned was on his way to meet Arthur when he heard the sound of a crying child some distance away. It was a sound he would recognise anywhere; not simply any child, but his granddaughter, and he broke into a run, fear for the girls clutching at his heart and half a hundred imaginings of what could have happened jamming his thoughts.

But nothing he had imagined could have prepared him for the sight before him. Though he was no stranger to death and had seen more men die than he wished to think on, it all paled in comparison to this sight. The Lannister boy, clearly dead, the snows around him crimson like a cloak of death, and Sansa, cradling her daughter some distance away. Gods, what has she done? Ned thought, but he knew; it was all too plain.

"Sansa," he murmured, approaching her slowly. She seemed in a daze, and he would not startle her; if she was frightened, and still armed, she could hurt herself or the child without meaning it.

[lifeisnotasong]

Sansa blinks away tears and wipes at her face. She regrets it as she leaves a smear of blood on her face. "Father," she said shakily. There are no words to explain this . . . she looks up at him and holds Eddara tighter.

"Joffrey . . . " she starts. "Someone told him about Eddara." She shudders and blinks tears away.

[starkhand]

I should not have let Ser Vimes talk me into staying my hand, Ned thought wretchedly. I should have killed the boy when he first arrived and spared Sansa this misery. He knelt down in the snow beside his daughter and put his arm round her shoulders; she was shivering, whether from shock or cold Ned could not say.

"Are you hurt, sweetling?" he asked, touching her face gently, though it seemed not to be her blood smeared there. "Is Eddara all right?"

[lifeisnotasong]

"He tried to take her," Sansa said, "he said he was going to free me of my burden." Eddara is not a burden. She is not. "I tried to stop him but he was too strong and he had a knife and he's hurt her arm and I had Arya's present and I don't remember what happened but I . . ." Sansa is sobbing so hard now she't can't get the words out. "I stopped him," she managed finally.

[sir_samuel]

Happy bloody new year, Vimesy.

Word reached him soon enough. The Lannister boy was dead, the Starks somehow involved. Sansa Stark somehow involved, if he understood properly. It sounded both completely mad and utterly, utterly plausible. Damn it. He had made too many promises to too many people, and none of them he had been able to keep. What the hell had happened to keeping the peace?

"Don't touch the body," was the first thing he said as he came upon the scene. "Someone tell me what the hell happened. Now."

[lifeisnotasong]

Sansa might have shrugged off her father's hand before but she steps back towards him at the tone of Vimes's enquiry. Eddara is whimpering quietly and Sansa does just as she's been told.

"Joffrey Baratheon threatened my daughter." Even the words make Sansa feel ill. "He took her off me though I tried to stop him, he held a knife to her throat." The next bit it fussy Sansa knows she stabbed Joffrey, it's her knife, he cursed her as he died . . . but she can't remember driving the knife into him. She wishes she could. "I had a knife, my sister gave me it for my fourteenth name day. I stopped him."

[starkhand]

"The boy was dead when I arrived," Ned added, his hand going to Sansa's shoulder. "I was on my way to meet Arthur when I heard Eddara crying, and that is how I found them." His voice was terse as he spoke to Vimes, and he remembered his intended lie, and half wished he had not allowed Arthur to talk him out of it.

[sir_samuel]

The words had come out more harshly than Vimes had meant them to, but when business had to be done, business had to be done. He crossed his arms over his chest, his expression dark as he listened to their story.

I had a knife... I stopped him.

Vimes had seen a lot of murders in his life, and a lot of murderers, and a lot of what they charmingly called domestic feuds in the business. If it hadn't been two teenagers - still kids in his mind - it would have been one of the most textbook deaths the island had seen yet.

His gaze flickered to Ned briefly, and he wondered if there was a part of the story he wasn't being told. There likely would have been, had their places been exchanged.

"Right," he said carefully, again looking at Sansa. "He told you he was going to hurt your baby." Sansa's bruises were hard to miss. "Did he tell you why?"

Small gods, they were damned well kids.

[dancingwillows]

Catherine was happy whenever she got a chance to step back into her element, sure, but that didn't mean she wanted it. She loved her job but hated that it existed.

The boy's body was simple enough; a stab wound with no other marks or bruising. It wasn't a quick death, that was for sure, but the part of Catherine that couldn't be completely analytical was already putting two and two together after she heard the Stark girl's story and coming up with he deserved itShe gathered herself before getting the chance to examine Sansa and her baby, setting her own emotions and her own assumptions aside for the time being. It didn't matter that she would have done exactly the same thing if her own daughter had been at risk; even when Lindsey had been tied up and crying for her mom, Catherine had stood aside at Warrick's insistence until she was free so she wouldn't ruin evidence. Emotions had their place, and right now they didn't belong

[lifeisnotasong]

Sansa has talked to the IPD and wants more than anything to be away from here and Joffrey and the whole island. At home if it were not for Eddara's injuries she could pretend none of this had happened.

"Why?" she said cautiously holding Eddara close. She recognises vaguely the picture making device. Lionel has one, he took wedding pictures and baby pictures. Why anyone would want to remember today is beyond Sansa's imagination. The woman is even wearing gloves which makes Sansa bristle, until she remembers she is somewhat blood stained.

[dancingwillows]

"Because it's what I do," Catherine replied. Sansa's reaction to her was nothing new, and she'd become immune to it over the years. People didn't like to be prodded and poked at, and someone in Sansa's position would be even more sensitive about it.

The good thing about the island, though, was that there was no real law, no courts to throw out her evidence, and nothing keeping Catherine from telling Sansa exactly what she thought. "And it'll prove that this wasn't your fault," she said, still keeping a bit of space between them. She wasn't going to start until Sansa was comfortable with her. "I think you were just defending yourself and your baby. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't do anything wrong."

[lifeisnotasong]

Sansa thinks it seems a very strange thing to do, especially for a woman. But she had examined the body (as Sansa has started calling it in her head.) Perhaps she was like a silent sister, but with extra duties.

Sansa nods hesitantly, she remembers Arthur's words that a trial would find Sansa had done what she had to. She finds it hard to believe, it is not what Sansa thinks of when she thinks of trials. "Do you get to decide?" she asked. Is Catherine part of the IPD? Sansa sighs and still holding Eddara closely, she pushes back her cloak and loosens the laces of her dress. Despite showing her father and Arthur, Sansa remains ashamed of the babes injuries. Yet the words spark a bit of hope in her. "I just wanted him to stay away from us," Sansa admits.

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb had given up his patrol to the south of the compound and come running for home as fast as he could, spurred by Grey Wind's urgent insistence that something was wrong.

He had no idea, until he actually came on the scene, how wrong it was. Joffrey Baratheon's body is as prone and dead as he could ever hope to see it, but Sansa's subdued yet panicked expession, and the blood on her dress and Eddara's, tells him only too quickly what's happened here.

His mouth goes tight, face pale beneath the freckles as he takes it in. He doesn't ask what happened--someone will tell him the details soon enough. Mostly he tries to keep himself from running his sword through what's left of Joffrey's twisted, bleeding heart.

[lifeisnotasong]

"Robb," said Sansa in a small voice, she's tired and sick and cold and the way Robb is staring at the body gives her pause. "You're not allowed near . . . it."

[_kinginthenorth]

"I wouldn't dirty my hands on it," Robb spits, but then visibly calm himself, at least for his sister's benefit. She shouldn't still be here, shouldn't have to see this, no matter what's already happened. "...You should not be here."

[lifeisnotasong]

"I had to answer questions," said Sansa. "The IPD came; Athur, there was a woman who took pictures. Ser Vimes." Sansa was least impressed with him of all. "And Father did not want me going anywhere alone."