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Sansa is in a bad mood.
A merchant has come to Winterfell and he has brought his daughter and Sansa has had quite enough of Robb, Jon, and Theon acting like absolute fools around her.
It began simple enough, with each of them talking just slightly louder than normal in her presence, going out of their way to cross her path, blustering and preening like idiots. She is used to Theon swaggering about, and sometimes even her brother, but cousin Jon is never like this.
“Like she is a fit match for any of them,” she whispers to Jeyne one day in the sewing circle, eyeing Septa Mordane to make sure she has not been heard.
“I doubt they're thinking of marriage,” Jeyne giggles and something deep and sour twists in Sansa's stomach.
It all comes to a head in the training yard. She is watching them spar (not because she wants to, of course, but someone needs to keep an eye on those three and it seems it must be her) and the merchant's daughter walks past and suddenly Robb stumbles and Jon manages to pull back and not skewer him at the last second. While Jon is off balance, Robb recovers and takes a swing that even Sansa can tell is messy, and it catches Jon on the forearm and she watches blood seep from the wound and down over his hand.
Robb, for his part, seems appropriately stunned, but he stands there and does not apologize and then there is a tense moment where they stare at each other before Jon puts his practice sword away and leaves the yard.
She finds him later in his rooms and just as she thought, he has not gone to Maester Luwin like he should have. Instead, he has wrapped a bit of cloth around his arm and is brooding, as he is wont to do (they call her moody and emotional, but Jon can out-sulk her by far).
She is furious with him - for sparring with live steel (and for other reasons she can't quite place) – and so she keeps her mouth shut as she takes the cloth off his arm to examine the wound.
“This needs stitches,” she tells him, makes her voice as cold as she can. She wants him to know that she is angry with him, but she refuses to tell him she is angry. When he says nothing, she grits her teeth to try and bite back her words, but it does not work. “I don't understand this stupid competition. She's pretty, but dreadfully dull and-”
Jon pulls his arm out of her grip and takes the cloth from her other hand and turns away from her, wrapping his wound up again with harsh, jerky movements.
“Have you ever thought that perhaps a boring merchant's daughter is the best I can do?”
She nearly reels back at the venom in his voice and this time when she tries to speak, nothing comes out.
“Robb and Theon are in it for the sport, but I'm just a bastard,” he spits the word and she does take a step back this time. “A wealthy merchant's daughter is more than I could ever hope for.”
“Father will-” she begins, but cannot find the words. Father will what? Father needs the King to legitimize Jon and she doubts the boy King Tommen (or, more importantly, his Lannister mother) would prioritize a Northern bastard with all the chaos going on in the south. Why had father not legitimized Jon when Robert was still King? They were friends, were they not? Now Robert is dead and Stannis is still at war over his crown and rumors of Tommen's own illegitimacy.
When she cannot find anything else to say, they stand in tense silence for a few moments before she watches his shoulders slump and he lets out a small sigh.
“I'll go see Maester Luwin,” he says, his voice low and she thinks he means it as some sort of apology. He still will not look at her as he walks past and out of his own rooms and he leaves her standing with her breath caught in her throat and tears stinging at her eyes.