Chapter Text
"They are here!" Sansa cried. She had been standing outside the castle gates almost since sunrise, waiting for the newcomers to arrive. Prince Joffrey himself was going to be fostered in Winterfell by her side – wasn't it rather exciting?
Queen Cersei died from birthing fever while in labor with her last baby, and King Robert was left a not-so-sad widower with three children, all of them Lannisters through and through. Robert was never a good father – he always doted on his bastards for a while at best, but then abandoned them completely to their own fate, only dimly aware of their existence. With the trueborns, it was even worse. He didn't want to watch their Lannister golden hair and catlike green eyes every day, so he left them in the care of his wife and her family. Not that Cersei minded.
But now all was different. With Cersei dead, the Lannisters had no excuse at all to detain the princes and princess at their place. Still, Robert wouldn't look after the kids himself.
He chose the easiest way: send the royal children to be fostered somewhere. Joffrey, an insufferable five-year-old, was going to Robert's best friend, Eddard Stark, Warden of the North. It wasn't like Robert wanted much to inflict such a creature on Ned, but he thought no one else could tame Joffrey.
So it came to this beautiful summer day, when Sansa Stark, Eddard's elder daughter, was standing at the gates. She usually wasn't the one to do so – she looked for the visitors from her window and then gracefully came down to greet them. But a real prince arriving – that was another matter. For once, Sansa stood watching the road the entire time, her brother Robb or her sister Arya showing up only occasionally.
The escort was rather modest for the Prince of the Seven Kingdoms. Only a few carriages and a small company of guards. It was no secret that Robert had no great love for his firstborn.
"Greetings, my lady," the captain of the guards said respectfully but not without a smile, as he spotted Sansa.
"My lord," she curtsied. "Will you be living with the prince here?"
"No, my lady. His Grace gave explicit orders that no one from King's Landing would stay with Prince Joffrey in Winterfell. Well," he stole a disdainful glance behind his back, "apart from his sworn shield, certainly."
The party rode on, and finally the prince's golden-and-red carriage came into Sansa's view. The girl gaped at it. Such a splendor! And what beautiful horses, even they were the color of gold!
Near the carriage she saw a lone rider in plain armor, his head covered with a dreadful helm in the form of a dog's head. The rider jumped off his horse and helped the prince get out.
Sansa was so excited she hardly noticed her family gathering around her and greeting the new fosterling. She held her breath and stood on tiptoes to see the prince better.
She was prepared for someone like Aemon the Dragonknight, grown, dashing and brave. That's why she felt a wave of disappointment wash over her: the prince was just a boy, not more than a year older than her! He had golden hair and was dressed finely in red velvet, to be sure, but his face was contorted with arrogance. Sansa flinched.
"My dear child," her mother, Catelyn, stepped forward. "It is an utmost pleasure for us to welcome you here. We hope you'll find a new home in Winterfell."
Joffrey looked at her contemptuously:
"I'm a prince as of yet, aren't I, Lady Stark?"
Taken aback, Catelyn gave him a forced smile:
"Of course."
"Then I demand to be addressed and treated as a prince. And it's wrong for the lady to speak before the lord."
Eddard Stark groaned inwardly. This was going to be far worse than he had predicted. It was horrifying to hear such words from a five-year-old's mouth.
"You must be tired," he said. "I will show you your rooms, Joffrey."
"Prince," Joffrey mumbled, but didn't dare correct the man.
Making one last attempt at hospitality, Catelyn spoke to the prince's sworn shield, who silently followed the boy wherever the latter went:
"Welcome to you, too, good ser. You can remove your helm – it is fine with us, I assure you."
"I doubt it, Lady Stark," he replied. Sansa shuddered upon hearing his voice – it was like the sound of metal scraping metal. "And I'm no ser."
He took off his helm. On one side his face was nothing to marvel at – an ordinary face of a Southern warrior. On the other, though… Sansa gulped. It was a twisted black mass, with cracks that glistened with blood or something suspiciously like it, and with the white of a bone showing on the jaw.
Screaming with fear, Sansa clung to her mother.
"Told you," the terrible beast said and put his helm back on.
"Mommy!" Sansa cried, hiding her face in Catelyn's skirt. "Mommy, is he an Other?"
"He's the Hound," she heard Joffrey's bored voice. "My sworn shield."
Catelyn carried the still weeping Sansa to her room and made her bed herself; she even sat by the girl's side to make sure she wouldn't have nightmares. Thankfully, Sansa recovered. Bodily, at least.
Her soul was shaken very badly by the whole incident. It wasn't only the ugliness of the Hound – it was also the conceitful behavior of Joffrey. Nothing even remotely princely! Sansa was shocked that her father even allowed such awful people to come to Winterfell.
"It was the king's order," Catelyn explained sadly on the morrow. "Specially for Ned… He wants your father to be a good influence for the child."
"How can any good influence get past that burned brute of a sworn shield?" Robb murmured.
"Now, Robb, where did you learn language like this?" his mother reproached him. "In front of the girls, too. Both the prince and his shield are guests here now, and I ask of you to be welcoming to them. After all, it's not the poor man's fault he has such scars," she added, not sounding very convincing.
"And whose fault is that Joffrey is a piece of sh…"
"Robb!"
"I'm sorry, Mother."
If the Starks hoped Joffrey's cordiality from the day before was nothing but exhaustion from the journey, their hopes were crushed. Joffrey appeared at breakfast looking just the same. His sworn shield was without his helm, and Sansa shrieked, averting her eyes.
"Sansa, please, try not to show it so outwardly," Septa Mordane whispered into her ear. "It's highly improper."
"Why not?" the Hound rasped from the other end of the table. "It's not that I want people to look at me anyway. Leave the girl be."
"Leave her be," Joffrey agreed, stuffing a lemoncake into his mouth and getting quietly scolded by the same Septa. "It iv fun ven fe's fo fcared."
"We here don't think it fun," Eddard snapped. "After breakfast I will bring you to Maester Luwin, he will be your tutor."
Eddard was more than shocked. How could this boy be Robert's son? Robert was quick to get angry, true, but exactly as quick to switch to laughter. Such cold unending rudeness and cruelty was never his thing.
Maester Luwin, having seen Joffrey, did his best to improve the child's temper. He used alternately respectful counseling, gentle talks and harsh punishments, but it was naught. The boy seemed to care for nothing but his own precious self. Everyone in Winterfell was overcome with anxiety – if this was the prince at five years old, what would become of him ten, fifteen years later? Who will take the Iron Throne when Robert's gone?
Sansa was trying her best to help the adults with Joffrey. Gritting her teeth, she tried to talk nicely to him or invite him to play, but it always resulted in her tears when he beat her. After Eddard found out, he was enraged and gave Joffrey ten lashes. Then the prince would simply scare Sansa away with insults.
The Hound – or Sandor Clegane, that was his true name as they learned later – was hardly better. He hated to be called "ser" and "lord", and punctuated almost every phrase with curses, which made any kind of conversation with him fairly impossible. At least, Sansa didn't know how to address a man in any other way. The only person in the North who, after five months of their life in the castle, looked the Hound straight in the face was Lord Stark – and even he did so just when there was a dire necessity and looked away as soon as possible. Clegane never said he was offended at that – rather to say, he looked always offended in the same degree.
Instead of being under a good influence of the Starks, Joffrey was soiling the previously undisturbed family peace of Winterfell.
During the sixth month of his fostering, the blow fell.
Sansa was strolling around, searching for a quiet place to look at her new picture book of Florian and Jonquil, when she almost stumbled over the prince. He was sitting on the ground, obviously very busy with something.
"My prince," Sansa said. "What are you doing?"
"Drawing," Joffrey said lazily. "You may look," he added as if doing her a great favor.
He handed her a piece of paper with a clumsy charcoal drawing on it. It was distinct enough, though, to make Sansa put her hand over her mouth in disgust and fright.
It showed a family of direwolves (two adults and three pups) being literally torn to pieces by a lion and a stag. Joffrey took great care in picturing the agonized expressions of the wolves and the parts of their bodies lying on the ground.
Tears sprang out of Sansa's eyes.
"You wicked, wicked boy!" she cried. "This is how you want to repay for our love?"
"Love – bah! You all hate me."
He snatched the drawing from her and raised it above his head proudly. The girl broke. She did something she'd never have thought of doing otherwise – kicking and screaming, she launched at Joffrey.
Surprised at the timid girl attacking him, the prince stood motionless for a split second, and she knocked him to the ground. Punching his face madly, she sobbed:
"You're horrible, so horrible! Go back to your Lannisters!"
Finally he fought, yelling for the Hound's help. Soon Sansa was literally pulled away from Joffrey by a much greater force.
"Stop it!" a rasping voice commanded. Still holding Sansa, the Hound took the drawing from the boy's hand and crumpled it.
"He started it all, he offended the sigil of my family…"
"She'd better be more respecting towards me…"
"Eddard Stark will bloody hear of this – now," the Hound said. Joffrey looked at him as if betrayed.
"You won't tell him!" he whined. "You ought to keep me safe from these Northerners!"
"That's exactly what I'm doing," Clegane snapped at him, putting Sansa on the ground. "Girl, where's your father?"
Still glancing at Joffrey fearfully, Sansa whispered:
"I-in the weirwood."
"Good," he pulled Joffrey after him, and they left in the said direction.
Neither of them appeared at supper later in the day, and Sansa didn't see them in the yard either. She secretly wished Father ordered them to leave.
Unfortunately, in the morning both Joffrey and the Hound were still in Winterfell, though Joffrey was unusually quiet and well-behaving.
"I gave him thirty lashes and said that if he wasn't a prince but a Northern subject, I would have had him executed for high treason," Eddard Stark explained. "Perhaps it did the trick."
Sansa looked at her father with respect. He could manage that beastly prince! Lord Stark never beat his own children – usually a serious reproach was enough – but for Joffrey, beatings seemed to be the only way. She reasoned, they would either tame him or scare him away from their home.
In the afternoon, after her sewing lesson with Septa Mordane, she went for a walk. The parts of the yard nearer to the buildings were occupied by Robb and Arya, who were apparently staging Robert's Rebellion, judging by the noise and yells. Sansa was forced to retire to the faraway parts.
When she was walking near the stables, suddenly she heard the sound of someone crying. Surprised, as her baby brother Bran was safely in his crib and there were no other children supposed to be around in the stables of all places, Sansa crept towards it.
The sight that met her eyes, as she stood hidden behind a bush, was most unexpected. The crying one was Joffrey, of all the possibilities! By his side stood the Hound and the Hound's ebony stallion.
"Their father b-b-beat me over nothing but a stupid drawing!" the prince complained.
"It's his duty," the Hound shrugged.
"Then it's my father's duty to p-protect me!" Joffrey cried. "Why did he never even come here?"
"Grieving for the Queen still," Sandor Clegane replied. Even Sansa didn't miss the sarcasm in his voice.
"G-grieving! I saw him w-w-with a serving girl!"
"He won't get better," the Hound said dryly. “You should damn well be prepared.”
"M-m-mother would never have sent me to this silly N-north! And I'm sup-p-posed to treat these idiots as brothers and siste-ers!"
His sworn shield sat by him:
"Better idiots than some like my brother."
Joffrey wiped his tears and looked up:
"Is it he that burned you? Why?"
"You will not ask me that again," the Hound growled, a hint of danger in his voice, and Joffrey grew quiet.
Sandor Clegane is the only one who can always control him, Sansa realized. She moved a little away, causing the bush to crackle and both their heads to turn in her direction. The girl blushed with shame, suddenly aware that she had been eavesdropping! Oh, dear! Eavesdropping! What would her parents say to that? It was a usual thing for Arya to do, but Sansa had always been the ladylike one...
"I am sorry," she stammered. "I was wondering if any of you has seen... eh... Maester Luwin."
"He's at the village," Clegane said. "Will be back by nightfall."
Joffrey eyed Sansa suspiciously, and she felt even more embarrassed. But after what she had heard, she was determined to have a second try at getting along with the guests.
"My prince, why don't we join Robb and Arya?" she asked, bravely getting ready for one of the war games she hated. "They're playing a game of Robert's Rebellion. You can be King Robert. You're his son, after all."
Joffrey seemed to hesitate a little, but then his eyes lit up:
"And who will be Rhaegar?"
"Robb, I think," Sansa suggested, hoping her brother wouldn't mind too much for this one time. "And Arya can be Father, she's so like him."
"And you be the Mad King," Joffrey said maliciously.
Sighing, Sansa agreed. She reluctantly took his hand, and – for the first time ever – gave the Hound a weak smile. The warrior glared at her, yet didn’t say anything. She was certain that he had realized she had heard the entire conversation.
Robb and Arya were more than surprised to see the prince, but as he seemed relatively friendly, Robb was eager to reconcile. Arya, on the other hand, scoffed and protested until Sansa had to scold her.
They had an enjoyable game – even Arya, who, according to their roles, had to side with Joffrey against Robb, but as he was several years their senior, she agreed it was fair. Sansa was actually glad she was the Mad King – she didn’t have to participate in the fighting this way.
At last, Robb had to give a very convincing show of Rhaegar dying on the Trident. Just as Lady Catelyn called the children to supper, very pleased to find Joffrey playing with the rest of the children.
During the supper the prince went almost back to his usual oh-so-superior self, so Lord Eddard Stark had to warn him against such behavior twice. Maester Luwin in the meantime returned with a raven message from the king, the first one in six months, who inquired whether all was well with the boy and whether Sandor Clegane would return to the capital – Ser Meryn Trant was killed, and until a replacement could be found, Robert was glad to de facto allow the Hound a temporary (at least) place in the Kingsguard.
“I will not take its vows,” the Hound said quickly to this, but in other ways he looked indifferent to the prospect.
“Don’t send him away from the prince,” Sansa suddenly blurted out. “He’s his sworn shield after all.”
More than that, she thought. To Joffrey, he’s a father-figure.