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In the stories that Old Nan used to tell Samson, about princes and swordfights and virtuous maidens, bastards didn’t exist. People didn’t touch other people that they weren’t married to, and no one ever had the surname of Snow or Sand or Waters or Stone. If there were bastards (and there weren’t, not really, not ever) they were henchmen to evil sorcerers, or seductive, lawless women who lived only for sexual fulfilment.
But Samson knows, deep down, that Joanna isn’t like that at all.
His sister, his half sister, his older sister, his bastard sister is more like father than any of them - she’s got the same solemn look in her eye and she never says anything without thinking, every action measured and weighed. Samson can’t see the woman that father betrayed mother for in her face, no one can, and that makes it even worse.
Because Joanna is kind, and gentle, and clever, and worst of all, pretty. Samson knows it’s wrong, knows that this kind of folly, this kind of failure, was inherent in villains and outlaws - it was a lack of restraint over wants and lusts, and worst of all had to be incest.
Samson was supposed to be the second son of a great lord, chivalrous and gentle and brave and strong, like the knights in the songs, but instead his eye drifted over his half sister’s form - her bodice lacings, the curve of her arse under her dress, the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled one of her rare smiles, the whiteness of her teeth when she bit her lip, the redness of said lips, the dark curls of her hair that reached the middle of her back.
Bastards weren’t supposed to be good and generous and gentle, kind and clever and pretty. Only trueborn maidens were supposed to be like that, and Samson knew nothing could ever come of his perverted attraction to Joanna - Joanna who he’d shunned as a child, because bastards were wanton and lustful and uncontrollable. Joanna who’d only ever wanted to be his sister, and now he wanted something else, something no brother should want from his sister.
He thinks of her in bed, of his hands running over her curves, her wide hips, the kind that are desired for children, her smooth legs and soft stomach and breasts, that he can’t quite cup in his hands, just too large to fit comfortably in his palms. When he really fools himself, he imagines her breathing his name while he touches her invisible body, softer than cotton or myrish silk, imagines he can really see her thighs shaking beneath him, lily white, covered by fine dark hairs.
Nowadays, Joanna seems to have finally given up trying to be his friend, because he’d been so against it when he was little. Now, she plays with Robb in the summer snows, and chases Arya all over the castle when she’s supposed to be in needlework lessons. Rickon clings to her legs and Bran chatters excitedly to her at dinner, and none of Joanna’s smiles are for Samson.
Not one.
They talk rarely and awkwardly, and Samson always cuts it off too early before he makes a fool of himself, because she’s so damn beautiful and right next to him, smelling of wild lavender and winter roses. He thinks he could breathe in the scent of her forever.
Samson tries not to see how his mother smiles at him when he suddenly stops talking to Joanna, as if it’s something to be proud of. Inside his head, he’s become bitter because of things he cannot have and wants he cannot fulfil: oh, mother, if only you knew.
Her perfect son, so courtly and proper, in love with her husband’s bastard.
Samson thinks mother would faint.
Because he is, at least he thinks he is, in love with her. He knows because when Samson sees Theon Greyjoy dogging her steps, trying to cup her arse and squeezing her breasts when Joanna’s off guard then Samson becomes filled with this red, burning hot fury that makes him feel like he’s going to explode. His hands begin to shake and his vision tunnels until it’s all he can see.
Samson wants to be the only one to touch her like that, ever, and he wouldn’t do it in such a vulgar way, such a humiliating way. Joanna was worth more than that. She deserves kindness and sweetness and softness, like a princess gets. Arya, the only other girl Samson really knows, isn’t like that at all but Samson thinks Arya should really have been born a boy the way she carries on.
So Samson resigns himself to watching her; one day, he'll go to squire or fight or marry, and he might never see her again. So he tries to memorize everything about her; sometimes, he thinks that she's the only thing he'd miss about Winterfell.