Author's Notes; This is a result of a little writing exercise I did and posted in three parts in Tumblr, and now here as well.

This was written with book!verse post-canon AU in mind, and was not intended as a reflection of the Game of Thrones TV show Season 7 events, which happened while I was still writing this - but I guess this can also be read in that context.

Arya heard her coming; soft shuffle of steps, leather slippers against the stone floor. She heard everything and everyone, everywhere. Never would she be taken unawares again, never would she be in a situation not knowing who was near her, in the other room, in the castle, in the yard.

Sometimes it tired her – being alert at all times and never letting her guard down. At other times she was glad of her training and how it had become her second nature.

Safer that way.

"What are you thinking?"

Sansa smelled of herbs and flour and a log fire burning in the big ovens of Winterfell kitchens. Her tone was uncertain, guarded, but still, she made the effort. Arya respected that even though part of her found it alien. It had been such a long time when anyone had cared of her thoughts or paid attention to her state of being.

The newly established relationship between the sisters was still fragile and they both danced around the tender bond cautiously, willing to move forward but wary of what lay hidden under the surface. Their differences from a long time ago had been forgotten and pushed away as children's foolish squabbles – which they truly had been – but their paths since then had been so different. What if there was nothing left but a name of their house to join them anymore?

Sometimes Arya had to pinch herself to make sure she was not dreaming. A lone wolf dies but here they were now, back in Winterfell, not two but four wolves together, Bran and Rickon having returned as well. And her favourite brother Jon at the Wall, back from death, hale and hearty. After so many years thinking herself as the last remaining wolf it was hard to believe that she had a pack again. Her own pack, her natural pack, not like those she had desperately tried to scrape together with strangers who had nonetheless abandoned her one after another.

"Nothing," she muttered at her sister, not looking at her but instead staring out of the window to the woods surrounding the castle. Their ever changing nature fascinated her after the barrenness and man-made landscapes in Braavos; sometimes they were green and gentle, sometimes dark and foreboding, the wind whistling through the leaves and making them whisper.

"I hope you are not thinking of the past. It bears not deliberating, not now, not anymore, when we have so much to look ahead."

"Do you ever?" Suddenly Arya wondered what kind of nightmares Sansa saw when – if – she ever looked into the years gone by. Did they have faces of villagers tortured to death, landscapes ravaged by war and destruction, the unnatural stillness of bodies found every morning in the halls of the House of Black and White?

They had shared their stories, of course, charted the routes that had taken them from King's Landing back to Winterfell and the events along the way. She knew about Sansa's time under Joffrey's torment, her forced marriage to Tyrion, flight to the Vale and later her escape from Littlefinger's clutches back to the North. She had told her siblings about her own travels with the Brotherhood Without Banners, with the Hound, her voyage across the Narrow Sea and the years in the House of Black and White – and how she had crossed the sea once more when she had heard of the fall of House Bolton in the North.

Bran and Rickon had shared their own tales from Beyond the Wall and from Skagos – but like Arya, they had left things out - she knew it. As had Sansa. Some things took longer to bring into the daylight. Some things might never be brought up again.

"Do I ever what?" Sansa gathered her skirts and seated herself on the window seat, her arm brushing Arya's. When she turned to her, they were so close Arya could see her pinched expression, lines etched on her forehead that had not been there when they had seen each other last before this.

"Look into the past."

A long silence ensued. Finally, Sansa opened her mouth and dropped her words out carefully, slowly.

"Sometimes. And then I wish I hadn't."

"Was it all as horrible as that to you?" Arya snapped, not being able to stop herself. What did Sansa know about the horrors of Harrenhal, of the roads in the war-ravaged country, of the squalor and poverty of Ragman's Harbour - about living all alone amongst strangers? As soon as the anger flashed through her as soon it was gone, though. Sansa might have slept in a feather bed for most of her nights but she had been forced to break bread with those who had killed her family and torn down her house, had been beaten bloody at a whim of a tyrant and subjected to advances of depraved men. Just because of who she was. It might have been easier to be Nobody than to be Sansa of House Stark.

"The worst is when I look back to times before – before everything happened, before Father…" Sansa didn't finish her sentence. She didn't have to. They both fell silent again.

Then Sansa lifted her head and squared her shoulders and Arya recognised the gesture for what it was; she had decided to be brave again, worthy of their Mother and Father and as courageous. She did that more often than she probably realised, but Arya had observed her over the many weeks and had noticed it time and time again when things became difficult and called for hard decisions. It started from the tilt of her head, from there spreading to her shoulders like a ripple, powerful and unstoppable until she was strong and defiant like a true Lady of Winterfell had to be. Grudgingly Arya had started to respect her for it, recognising her strength different than her own but equally formidable.

Sansa leant forward and touched Arya's knee, her rough-spun breeches already scuffed and worn from what she had put them through.

"But there were some good things too, and sometimes I think of them and they give me strength. Surely there was something good you saw in your time away as well? Even if just smallest things."

Arya stared at her and knew her words and false cheer being only an attempt to lift their spirits from the gloom they often times sank into. She loved her for that, but not knowing how to express it, she only smiled.

Encouraged by that small sign of thawing on Arya's part, Sansa continued. "Were there friends you made who you still think of fondly? Did you taste delicacies you can't forget? Tell me something good that happened to you – there must have been something!"

As Arya was still gathering her thoughts Sansa's expression changed with a small knowing smile forming on her lips.

"Was there anyone special… did you have a sweetheart when you were away?"

Sweetheart? The expression was so odd and far removed from what her life had been that Arya almost laughed out loud.

"Sweetheart? Do you mean did I fuck someone?"

Seeing hurt expression on her sister's face Arya immediately regretted her crudeness. How Sansa could still be the same fine lady as before, head filled with songs and chivalrous love, she couldn't understand, but it was not her place to sully it.

"I am sorry, I shouldn't have said that. No, I didn't have a sweetheart."

Which was not exactly true. Or actually, it was. He had never been her sweetheart – she had only hoped he would have been, could have been. Not then, not at the time, but later, when she had grown older and recognised the longing she felt when she thought of him, the hollow ache at the pit of her stomach in the middle of the night. Even here, even now. What if…

Something in her face must have given her away as Sansa squeezed her arm softly.

"Are you sure? You just remembered someone, didn't you?"

Arya answered slowly, struggling to find the words. She had never spoken of it to a living soul, and instead of it being difficult as she would have thought, it actually felt oddly liberating.

"There was someone. I knew him for a while when I was still in Westeros, travelled with him and a few others. He was older and I was only a child, so nothing became of it, of course. But I think he liked me."

Gendry. Those piercing blue eyes and jet black hair, his sullen face which transformed when he was relaxed, his smile when he teased her.

And his broad shoulders, and his arms thick with muscle, and his soot-covered chest and his narrow waist… Arya remembered watching him at his anvil back in the Harrenhal smithy, moving in the rhythm of his work, and something else she had not recognised at the time. Only when she had started to notice the sailors at the jetty, heaving cargo from the ships clad only in their breeches, sweat beading on their bare torsos under the burning sun, had she finally recognised it for what it was.

None of those men had been like Gendry, to whom she inevitable compared them all, and despite a few of them having started to flirt with her after noticing her watching, she had turned away and pushed her carts away as fast as she could. None of them were him.

Sansa smiled encouragingly. "Of course he liked you. Who was he, what happened then?"

"He was a bastard, a smith's apprentice. He was from Fleabottom and he was not high-born and he didn't read poetry or play the flute and he cursed like a sailor and didn't take a bath for weeks at the time. But he was kind to me and defended me when we were in trouble and he took me seriously and didn't laugh at me even though I was just a scrawny little thing then, and he told me jokes which were not funny and he told me I looked pretty – once. He was my friend and I miss him." She knew Sansa would be upset to hear about how she had gotten herself mixed up with a commoner, but she didn't care.

"He sounds like a wonderful person."

Arya looked up, immediately on her guard, ready to detect the slightest hint of falseness in her sister's words – but Sansa looked at her straight on, seriously.

Maybe she didn't care, after all?

Discomfited by the sincerity of her expression Arya muttered something about the person not necessarily having to be good to be worthy.

"Do you know where he is now?"

"No. The last time I saw him was we were in the Riverlands. Maybe he is still with the Brotherhood. Maybe he has gone back to King's Landing. Maybe he is dead."

The thought that Gendry might not be among the living hurt, and to avoid it Arya turned the tables.

"And you? Did you have a 'sweetheart'? Some handsome lord or a knight you made moon eyes at?"

Arya had meant it lightly, not seriously thinking that Sansa would have had a chance to get close to anyone, having been a prisoner most of the time they had been apart. Hence she was surprised when Sansa blushed, crimson red spreading from her neck across her face. She wasn't the strong woman anymore, not the one who managed the whole castle full of people and supplies with an iron fist, the one whose word sometimes dictated who lived and who died in that hard winter that was upon them. A shy girl, a bashful maid had taken her place.

"Sansa! There was someone, was there!?"

Sansa could school her features but could not hide brightness of her eyes, something glimmering in the corners, nor the downward turn of her lips.

Why?

"Yes, there was someone. He was kind to me - in his own way."

Arya's curiosity now fully roused she tried to think who it could have been. Somebody at King's Landing – or in the Vale? Some young lord or a noble knight, undoubtedly.

"And what happened?"

Sansa looked down at her lap. "Nothing much. I was too young, although I was a maid flowered. We did share but a few moments together and I believe he told me some things he had never told anyone else. He saved my life, once, when it was being threatened. My life and my virtue."

Sansa sighed and looked at Arya. Yes, there were tears in her eyes and Arya was surprised by the reaction it raised in her. She wanted to protect her and shield her from her sorrows. It had been unfair of her to ever think that her life had been easier only because she had lived more sheltered life than she had.

Arya grasped Sansa's hand and squeezed it softly.

"He was not a noble knight nor a lord, although he was not a bastard – he might as well been; he hated his family and they deserved it. I know you think me shallow and superficial but it was not like that."

A wane smile flickered on Sansa's face. "He was not…handsome. He was crude and uncouth and he could be cruel – but he was honest and he was true."

"Where is he now?"

"He is dead, I heard. From someone who was there at his last moments." Sansa cast an odd sideways look at Arya but then focussed back on their hands on her lap, twined together.

"I am truly sorry to hear that. What happened between you and him must have been serious for you to still think of him."

Not a knight or a lord? Not handsome – but uncouth and crude? It was a new side of Sansa Arya had not known existed.

"I think it was, although in truth it might not have been much. I knew him in King's Landing and saw him the last time during the Battle of the Blackwater when he… He didn't mean to hurt me, he truly didn't! And he didn't, only scared me a little. But I understood."

Sansa's shoulders stooped and she twirled her fingers around Arya's, all broken nails and calloused fingertips from the hard work they had been putting in to raise Winterfell from ashes. She whispered so low that Arya had to strain her ears to hear her.

"I sang for him. And I thought he would kiss me – but he didn't."

It hit Arya then - but no, it couldn't be, it was not possible, not Sansa who loved music and poetry and lemon cakes and curly-haired pretty youths! It must have been some other uncouth man from King's Landing she had sung to. Some other man with a connection to the Battle of the Blackwater. And yet…

"The Hound," she blurted without thinking. And was rewarded with a hitched intake of breath, the stiffness of Sansa's posture.

"It was the Hound! Clegane. It must have been! He told me you sang for him." Arya couldn't believe it. Her delicate sister, so fine and so refined – and the Hound?!

"Sandor, his name was Sandor," Sansa whispered.

Images flashed through Arya's head; she remembered how she had hated him and wanted to bash his ugly head in, how she had wanted him dead, and how she had recited his name night after night among those who she planned to kill one day – until came the night when she hadn't.

She couldn't have said then nor now why that had changed. But she did remember also how the Hound had always made sure that she had food in his belly, had shared his meagre rations with her even when they didn't have much. Any other man might have let her go hungry, but he hadn't. And at the Twins he had hit her in the head, but only with a flat of an axe, and had carried her to safety when she surely would have been killed had she ran inside as she had wanted.

She remembered that morning after she had dreamt of Nymeria and her mother, and how awkward he had been and started to say her something, almost as if wanting to comfort her, but she had cut him off. And how on that last day it had felt so wrong to give him the gift of mercy he had asked, even after all the vile things he had said.

"And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her."

And then it didn't seem so strange after all.

"Sandor," Arya repeated, "his name was Sandor."

And whether it was she who pulled Sansa close or the other way around, but they found themselves in each other's arms and Sansa was crying and Arya was patting her back and soothing her with gentle words and hums that were not words at all but sounds meant to tell her that she was there for her, she understood her, she wanted to take away her pain and let her take away hers in return.

That they were both wolves and sisters and despite all that had happened they still had each other and they were stronger for it.

Arya also told her that the Hound – Sandor - might actually not be dead after all, that he was the strongest man she had ever known and she had cleaned his wounds with boiling wine, and Riverlands was densely populated and someone might have come across him and patched him up… And as she spoke, she thought that maybe Gendry was there too, riding with the Brotherhood, smithing for them and maybe she could find him one day.

Sansa hugged her tighter and repeated her words and at every saying her voice became steadier and her sobs became fewer and in the end, she just leant against Arya's shoulder and the wet blotch in her tunic made so by her tears.

"When this is done – when Winterfell is strong again – we could take some men with us and go to the Riverlands and seek them there." Sansa's voice was stronger now and she pushed herself away from Arya, but let her hands rest on her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed but her head and shoulders did that thing again.

She was Sansa Stark, the lady of Winterfell, and she had a plan.

Arya nodded, her spirits lifted.

"Yes, we can do that. We will do that. It will not be long before things will be settled here and Bran and Rickon can look after thing while we are gone. And we have other matters to take care of in the Riverlands as well; we must seek out Blackfish and Uncle Edmure now that Riverrun is theirs again."

Sansa smiled at her and Arya smiled back and probably for the first time since her return she felt a flicker of something strange… something she had not felt for a long time. From the expression on Sansa's face, she felt it too.

Hope.