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“Sansa,” Jon says, voice hard, flinty, and she flinches, freezes, but he doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t move closer than where he stands across the lawn.
He waits for her to look back at him, and when she finally does there’s a flash of something across his face, but then it’s gone, gone too fast for her to recognize it. She’s gotten to know his looks well in these last few months, started to categorize all his different expressions. She’s seen him frustrated, laughing, worried, shy, self-conscious — self-conscious most of all when he’d asked her if she might be willing to get dinner with him outside of the meals she cooks for him and the kids. When he’d asked her if she might be willing to get dinner just the two of them, no cooking or cleaning to speak of. When he’d asked her if she might be willing to go on a date.
She thought she’d learned all of his expressions by now, but she’s never seen this one, carefully blank, shuttered closed. It’s completely unfamiliar to her. Then again, maybe this is the first real expression she’s seen from him since she pushed him off the side of her boat. Maybe the rest of them were all just part of his act.
For a moment, his brow strains, his jaw tightens — and then it falls away and all that’s left is a weariness she knows well.
“For whatever it’s worth,” he says, no longer quite meeting her eyes, “thank you.”
She doesn’t know what to do with that. With what seems like real gratitude, real depth of emotion. She doesn’t know what to do with it, especially not now that she knows what a good liar he is. This whole thing was one big trick, after all. Some sort of prank. Revenge. All of it. None of it was real.
He’d sworn at her the day she pushed him off her boat, threw his tools in the water after him. He’d called her self-obsessed, spoiled, stuck up, an out-of-touch insufferable princess who’d never worked a day in her life. Well, he and his siblings had shown her, hadn’t they? Him, Arya, Bran, Rickon. They were all part of it. Laughing at her, surely, just as soon as she was out of the room. They’re not laughing now, though.
It’s all too much to take in. Too much to process. Jon finally meets her eyes again, but Joffrey takes her arm.
“Let’s go, Sansa,” her husband commands. “It’s past time to get you out of these disgusting, bargain bin rags.”
He steers her back to the limo at the end of the dirt driveway where Meryn Trant stands, one hand resting on a holster clipped to his belt. Joffrey had made it clear the armed guard would be well within his rights to physically stop Jon if he tried to interfere, to physically stop even the kids. For one second, Sansa wonders if he’s really here for her. If he’s here to drag her back whether she wants to go or not.
She hesitates when she reaches the car door, but Joffrey waits instead of ducking in first.
“Let’s go, Sansa,” he orders again. “I don’t want to spend another second here. I’m getting itchy just looking at this place. I can’t imagine being held hostage here as long as you were.”
She hadn’t felt like a hostage. Not like she feels now. But maybe that’s wrong. Everything she thought she knew five minutes ago was wrong, after all. And, truly, it doesn’t matter either way. Joffrey is right that she doesn’t belong. There’s nothing for her here. Everyone she’s met, made friends with — were they all in on the joke?
She ducks into the car, and Joffrey follows, pulling the door shut. Before the partition goes up, she can see Meryn Trant getting into the front passenger seat, Osmund Kettleblack turning the key in the ignition. And then they’re both hidden behind the black screen, and it’s just her and Joffrey, his focus already back on his phone instead of her as the limo reverses out onto the street, kicking up dust under the wheels.
As the driver shifts gears, the dust starts to settle, and she can see them then. Jon with that same solemn look from before. Arya scowling. Bran in his chair next to them, brows pulled together, and then little Rickon at his side, face screwed up like he’s about to let out some sort of wild howl. And then he’s running, Arya running after him, but the limo jolts forward, the spinning wheels catching traction, and a cloud of dust hides them both from view.
It doesn’t settle again until they’re halfway down the paved road at the end of Jon’s street, and by then the limo is nearly gone, nearly turning the corner, but for just a second she can see them. They’re standing where the dirt meets the concrete, Rickon up on Jon’s shoulders, Bran and Arya on either side. Jon holds Rickon’s left ankle in one hand, raises his other hand half-heartedly. The windows in the limo are too dark to see in, obsidian, opaque, but she raises a hand too, waving back all the same.