A/N: Okay, so. I've been imagining Sansa and the Hound falling in love and living happily ever after since I first read Book One and my ship for them has just been festering for eleven years and I just…! Can't-hold-it-in-any-longer! So I just sat down and wrote this horribly crude version of what I've been imagining for years and this is what came out. I know it's kind of a mess, but thought I would share it anyway.
Notes: Jon sits the iron throne. The war is over. Jon is King, Daenarys is Queen. The Seven Kingdoms are united once more. The Night King is gone. The dead are defeated. Winter has come and gone, and as spring settles over the land, so does peace. Sansa is Lady of Winterfell. She rules beside her brother Bran and her sister Arya, though both siblings insist they want no part in ruling, but only to assist Sansa and to advise. Arya serves as Sansa's personal body guard (among many other things) and Bran...well Brand spends most of his time in the godswood, visiting the past and the future and living through his animals. Though the land is finally at peace, there is still much to do. Displaced orphans of war, farmers who lost everything when the dead ones came, rebels who have some crazy unfounded loyalty to Cercei Lannister. But the fact of the matter is, Sansa, Bran and Arya are royalty now. Their cousin in the king and Winterfell is Jon Snow's home. Many would do them harm. After an assassination attempt (in which both Arya and Brienne easily take down the attacker) Jon snow sends an envoy to Winterfell as a show of strength. Among that envoy is Sandor Clegane.
Sansa calls Sandor Clegane to her sitting room alone
"Sandor Clegane," she says. "I've called you here to ask why you have come to Winterfell?" Surely there is more call for him to stay in King's Landing at the side of the king and queen, Sansa thinks. It is known that the Hound fought alongside Jon Snow against the White Walkers and it is known that Jon trusts him, despite his previous alliances and employments with the Lannisters.
"Lady Sansa, I was sent here by your brother. He wishes for me to protect his sister."
"Cousin," Sansa corrects him, absently.
"My apologies, my lady. Yes your cousin."
"You know, I have the two most deadly body guards in the realm," Sansa muses. "There's Brienne of Tarth, whom I'm sure as you can personally attest, is a better knight than many seasoned young men. And then there is my sister, Arya who trained as a faceless, who is the most feared and reviled assassin in perhaps all the realm. And yet my cousin, the king, sends me one of his best knights for protection. You'll forgive me, Sandor Clegane if I have trouble understanding that. Especially that the eleven other knights who accompanied you are barely more than boys. It's clearly a show of strength on the King's part, not an actual concern. So I ask you Sandor, did you come to Winterfell out of an order from your King, or did you come for another reason?"
"What other reason would that be, my lady?" he asks, voice tight.
Sansa stands up and walks around the room aimlessly looking out the window. Fire is flickering in the night and Sansa studies it for a bit.
"Do not think I've forgotten the night at King's Landing. The night of the wildfires," she says quietly.
Sandor is quiet a moment. "I've not forgotten either," he says finally, and his voice has changed again. It's softer, stranger.
"No. I didn't think you had." She turns and looks at him. "I've thought of that night often. You offered to save me, protect me from harm. For the longest time I imagined you had kissed me that night. A young girl's fantasy." She dismisses the thought with a wave of her hand, but Sandor swallows.
He is silent as she approaches him. Her eyes are serious and he sees that a little bird she is no more. She is a woman grown. A woman who has been raped and tortured, beaten bloody and lost nearly all of her family members. A woman who has dealt out sentences of death, killed husbands and fools. She is smart and she is a cunning; a woman who knows what she wants. Oh what a fool he thought he was to think she wouldn't realize. To think she wouldn't know. And now…
She reaches up and cups his cheek, the burned one. He flinches and looks away.
"Come now," she says. "You think I do not know that monsters hide behind even the comeliest of faces? It's been long since I was the child who feared you for your scars. But it's different now." She studies his scars.
Sandor doesn't say so, but the Elder brother healed him on the quiet island. Day by the day the festering scars that plagued him his entire life slowly closed over until even the gash of bone on his jaw was no longer visible. The weeping, blistering sores that would never heal were now nothing more than scared flesh. Still hideous, but no longer hurting. No longer burning.
She pulls his face to hers. Their kiss is soft at first, then urgent heat grips them both. They are both brought back to that awful night in king's landing where he tasted of drink and sweat and blood and she of fear.
He breaks from her eventually.
"For you," he says. "I came here for you. I volunteered. Begged the king, really. He was on to me. Not a fool that brother of yours."
This time, she doesn't correct him. Instead she kisses him again. Fiercely. Then brings him to her bed.
...
Sansa reads, then rereads the proposal before her. Her hand shakes on the parchment and she finally sets it down.
Arya pauses in sharpening a knife. "Something wrong?"
Sansa explains the proposal for marriage. An alliance with a comely youth of a powerful house. The suitor is willing to spend nine months of the year at Winterfell so that Lady Stark will not be away from the North. It seems the a great opportunity. A smart political alliance. It's the most recent in a strew of betrothal requests and as she remains the unwed Lady of Winterfell, she knows there will only be more.
Arya shrugs and resumes sharpening the knife. "What of the Hound?" she asks.
"What of the Hound indeed?" Sansa says, studying the wood of her desk. It's no secret in the house of Stark that Sansa has taken the Hound as her lover.
"Do you think-"Sansa asks her sister. She stops. She starts again. "Do you think he would marry me?"
Arya frowns. "Isn't that his betrothal?"
"Sandor," Sansa corrects.
Arya's eyebrows raise. "I think he'd do anything for you."
"Would you ever ask a man to marry you?" Sansa asks, suddenly worried. Women just didn't ask men to marry them. It wasn't don.e
Arya smirks.
Sansa nearly laughs. Of course her sister has no fear. No fear of anything, least of all the social normalcy of marriage. She would marry that Gendry Waters in an instant, is she ever wanted to be married to anyone.
Sansa starts to pen a letter to the king.
Jon, Oh how I miss you. How is her Grace, the Queen? How are the children? I sent Rheagarys a necklace last month. Please say she got it. I think it would match the purple of her eyes. I also write to you for your word and your blessing upon a marriage proposal. I wish to propose marriage to Sandor Clegane. I would have your blessing before doing so. Please respond in kind.
The answering letter comes in a fortnight.
Dear sweet Sansa, You more than anyone have a right to choose whatever marriage you wish. I will not force you into yet another political betrothal. If you are ever to marry, you will marry someone of your choosing. For love, I do hope. And if Sandor Clegane is your choice, I have no objection. On the one condition that Dany and I are present at the wedding. I would not want to miss my sweet sister wed to the one she loves.
…
Sandor enters Sansa's study. She has laid out all the betrothal requests.
She gestures to them. "I've received another proposal request this afternoon. It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that I must marry eventually. These requests will not stop if I do not. And it is my duty as a Stark to carry on the family name with heirs. Unfortunately I don't think Bran will be taking a wife anytime soon. And Arya, well she'd sooner be a pumpkin than a bride. I'm afraid it's up to me."
Sandor goes still and his mouth is tight.
Sansa continues walking about the room. "You know, I have been married twice already. Betrothed three times. Each experience was, dare I say, dreadful. You can imagine how I might not be warm to the idea of marriage at all. I've been a pawn in the game of thrones all along, and now that the game is over," she sighs. "I have no wish to be a pawn any longer."
She turns to Sandor now, facing him fully. "I have written to Jon and he has given his blessing. I am yours if you will have me. Will you marry me, Sandor?"
The Hound blinks twice. "But surely, there are better suitors, more strong alliances to be made-?"
"Haven't you been listening?" Sansa cuts him off. "I will not marry a stranger for some political alliance I want no part of. I will marry who I choose and I choose you. Now what do you say? Will you be the husband of the shrew Lady Stark?"
Sandor drops to his knees. "I have been yours, since the moment I first saw you my lady. I would be whoever you wish me to be. Husband is not even in the realm of possibility but I will accept it all the same."
And he smiles, for perhaps the first time ever, and he wraps his arms around her legs.