Once Arya Stark noticed it, she wondered how she'd ever missed it before. No one would bother to look his way, but at the end of her table sat the Hound, sitting half in shadow but with a gaze unmistakably fixed on her sister. Sansa was merely conversing with fat Lord Manderly to her left, but unbeknownst to her, gray eyes took in every hand gesture, every tip of her head, every delicate laugh.
In truth, many people looked at Sansa. The ladies of the village looked to her for guidance, with an open admiration for her poise and grace that Arya knew she herself would never receive. The remaining Lords of the North looked at her with thinly-conceiled greed for the promise of her title as heir to the North. And then there were the lusty stares from men that Sansa was all but oblivious to now. But the way the Hound looked at her was singularly different. Arya searched in vain for an apt description, but found none. Whatever it was, that was not the way a sworn shield should look at his mistress.
Sandor would not be here in their court at all had it been up to Arya. A month after the surviving Stark children had reunited, the Hound had appeared at their tent completely unannounced. Arya had been half a second from spilling his blood across the threshold when Sansa shrieked at her to stop.
"Why should I?" Arya replied. "It wasn't enough for him to die when I left him. Now the gods had to bring him back to hound me."
"The gods have their reasons, girl," he said. She remembered the exhaustion in his voice. "But bugger that, I've never been a godly man, and nor am I now. Put your sword down or you'll be able to ask them yourself soon enough."
"Sandor." While the two had been bickering, Sansa had risen from the furs in which they had been sleeping. Oddly enough, Sandor Clegane had looked almost ashamed in that moment. A thick silence hung before them before Arya cleared her throat.
"I think you should step outside, Arya," Sansa said.
"Me?" Arya had been incredulous. During their month together, she had already recounted her tale of how the Hound had kidnapped and tried to ransom her in great detail. While Sansa had burst into laughter at the image of Sansa rolled up in her blanket cocoon, she thought she had at least been taken seriously.
"Fine, I'll have you know I'll be waiting right outside to finish you if you so much as scratch her."
Her blood boiling, she had stormed outside and proceeded to hack at a nearby tree. If she squinted just so, the trunk of the enormous oak could pass as the Hound. I'll show him what I'd do if Sansa wasn't here.
It was barely five minutes past when Sansa and the Hound had emerged from the tent.
"Well?" Arya had said.
"The Hound has sworn his sword to me, Arya," Sansa paused while Arya's mouth gaped open like a Tully trout. "He has vowed to serve and protect the North to the end of his days."
Arya had fumed and complained and more than once asked Sansa whether she was soft in the head before finally resigning herself to the fact that not only was the Hound alive and well, but he was now constantly present, guarding their tent as they slept and escorting Sansa to and from their tent every day. Bran had been similarly suspicious, as the last time he had seen the Hound, he had been pushed out of a window by his former masters, but after a private discussion with Sansa, he had silenced any remaining misgivings. Sansa seemed to trust him completely. Arya could not figure out why, but she was assured time and time again that the Hound had proven himself.
Could they be carrying on a secret relationship? Arya felt nauseous at the thought of the great brute with her sister. Luckily, she didn't think this was the case, as Sansa had precious little private time. The two sisters had shared a tent until Winterfell had been rebuilt to the point where it was again fit for habitation, and all of her time outside of Arya's company was spent with Bran or their council or praying in the godswood. The Hound meanwhile was as busy as Sansa. When he wasn't guarding her, he was training the men of the village in combat, as wildlings were still encountered on occasion, and the North's fighting men had been drained long ago. He had been put to the task by Bran, and while he won no friends with his antagonistic demeanor, no one questioned his skill with a sword.
No, he simply fancies her, Arya decided. And once she came to that realization, she couldn't help but notice his eyes following Sansa everywhere. He snuck peaks when he thought no one else was looking, but Arya's extensive training meant she was particularly adept at seeing what others thought they had hidden. She saw it all.
She noticed the way his eyes seemed to follow Sansa's hair when she tossed it back behind her and it caught the candlelight just so. She saw the careful glance he had swept over her, just quick enough to go unnoticed, after Sansa had pulled herself out of the little pool of water they swam in one hot day. She saw the way he was able to predict exactly which direction she would turn her horse when they were riding through the woods, knowing too when she would halt at a patch of wildflowers. Arya watched him at dinner one night when Sansa had been goaded into singing Florian and Jonquil. He had closed his eyes and Arya was struck by how peaceful he looked, if the Hound could ever look peaceful. The muscle beneath the burned flesh of his face seemed to relax in a way Arya had never seen before.
Once when Sansa had passed by the training yard and he had been sparring with Slannen, the quickest swordsman of the lot, he had suddenly turned a routine demonstration of proper form into an impressive duel with as much flourish as the Hound could ever be said to have. Blow after blow rained down as he poured all of his strength and skill into the flight of his wooden sword until finally he broke Slannen's sword in two. While the circle of observers had hooted and cheered, he had simply turned to Sansa and nodded, and she had smiled approvingly in return.
Whatever sick desires the Hound was harboring for her sister, Arya was determined to put an end to them altogether. While Sansa was climbing into bed one night when the Hound was off-duty, Arya sat up and looked her in the eye.
"I want to discuss the Hound," she said.
"This again? Arya, he's a good man. He tried to protect me as best he could in—"
"No, I want to discuss the fact that he wants you. As a man wants a woman. He's been looking at you in ways he shouldn't." Arya turned to her sister and she could have sworn by the old gods and the new that Sansa's face had turned three shades redder.
"You're blushing. Gods, Sansa, you're blushing!" Arya had expected denial, disgust, anger—anything but this. Sansa still didn't speak, but Arya had more than enough words.
"You fancy him too!" Sansa turned even redder at that. "Please don't tell me the two of you are…are…" Sansa laid a hand on Arya's arm.
"No, we aren't together," she said quietly. "Arya, how can I make you understand?" She thought for a moment, then slipped out of the bed and paced to her trunk against the wall. Arya watched her, still struggling to comprehend it all when she came back with a soiled piece of fabric that looked as if it had once been white.
"What is that?" she said with disgust.
"His Kingsguard cloak," she said, and Arya knew immediately from the careful way in which she said it that this was no mere cloak. "During the Battle of the Blackwater, he was leaving and he offered to take me with him, to keep me safe, but I didn't want to go. I was scared. He…kissed me. And he left me this cloak."
"I thought you outgrew your songs, Sansa. Didn't you tell me that?"
"Life is not a song, I know. Have I not learned that time and time again? But I've always had to keep this cloak. I've had it for years…back in King's Landing, in the Vale, on the long trip back, while we were rebuilding Winterfell."
"So he gave you a bloody, sweaty rag and you're in love with him?" Sansa had always soared with her heads far above the clouds, but this was another level of insanity altogether.
"You don't understand. You probably never will."
"So what, he wants you, you want him, and you're both too craven to do anything except mope? Really, him? Sansa, he's the Hound. Joffrey's dog."
At times, Sansa could be just as stubborn and immovable as their father had been, even if her features were unmistakanbly Tully. Arya turned to look at her and was struck by how very Stark-like she looked in this moment. Arya sighed, knowing things were once again outside of her control. Sansa was humming a tune to herself that sounded almost like the Mother's Hymn as she fingered the cloth in her hands almost reverently.
"I've had this for so long. I think it's about time I return it."
And so the next day, Arya found herself walking with Sansa to the rooms where the guards slept, stained cloak wrapped around Sansa's hands. Outside of his door, Sansa kissed her sister on the cheek gently.
"I know you loathe him, but thank you for not spilling his brains across the floor that morning when he returned. And thank you now." Arya was embarrassed, as she always was when her sister got affectionate, but she swallowed her words for the first time and turned to walk away.
She was halfway down the hall when Sandor Clegane opened his door, his eyes floating from the bloodied cloak to the look on Sansa's face, in a moment of perfect silence before—.
"Little Bird?"
It was two years later when Arya Stark stood in the godswood, forced into a dress and watching her sister wed the man she had once longed to kill. By all rights, she ought to be scowling, but even for her it was difficult, for Sansa Stark was smiling through tears and Sandor Clegane was radiant. Freshly groomed and wearing his house colors, he looked ten years younger with a smile on his burned face to match. Arya had noticed he was smiling an awful lot lately. She thought Sandor, as Sansa made her call him, looked even worse while smiling, but apparently her opinions stopped mattering a long time ago, for Sansa just laughed and married him anyway. They were both clutching the old stained cloak on this day, the cloak that had been the beginning of a romance that was sure to inspire some more of those songs that Sansa had loved so dearly. Arya feared she might have to take part of the credit for their union as well.
When the small, quiet wedding was over, Bran suggested they say a prayer for all they had lost, holding hands there in the godswood—Bran, Rickon, Arya, and Sansa—the pack of wolves who had lost so much and who had taken in a dog as one of their own. She saw Sandor stoop down and press a kiss to Sansa's head, his eyes ever on the lady who was his new wife. Arya turned and smiled to herself. Maybe she needn't watch him anymore.