Disclaimer: All characters below to George R.R. Martin.
This story was originally written for a comment fic contest in the Sansa x Sandor livejournal community. The prompt was "People need touch (skin-on-skin contact) for their psychological well-being. Sandor's never had a lot of that, but now he's in Sansa's service, she touches him all the time . . ." The story morphed into my epilogue of the Sansa/Sandor relationship in a future time near the end of "A Dream of Spring."
Sandor
On the outskirts of Winterfell Sandor fought the abomination that had been his brother. Their swords kissed and sprang apart and kissed again. Ser Robert Strong's strength was inhuman but Sandor pressed the attack with a speed and skill that he had never possessed before, inflamed by the knowledge that it was not just his life, but also the Little Bird's that was at stake should he fail. Sandor could not have said how long they fought, it might have been minutes or it might have been hours; time slept when swords woke. This was destiny and it seemed to him that he was merely a man who was somehow brought forth by the hour itself; his entire life had been but a preparation for their fraternal combat. At the end, Ser Robert Strong lay slain not by Sandor's fatal blow but Sansa's. She stood before him, her beautiful tear-stained face smiling at him with all the love and compassion of the Mother Above. His pain had grown sharp, near unbearable, but he was mad with joy. As he sank to his knees, he heard himself bark with laughter. And then he felt nothing but the cold as he fell face first into the snow.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in his own bed at Winterfill. Every nerve in his body sang in pain. But as he turned his head to face the light at the window he saw the Little Bird asleep in a chair beside him, and he exulted in the exquisite pain and pleasure of being alive.
The maester said that Sandor had sustained grievous injuries and that his recuperation would be long and arduous. The months that followed were the most physically taxing of his entire life. Throughout it all, the Little Bird was there to nurture him. She was the best nursemaid he could have wished for; she fed him when he could not feed himself, shaved and combed him, soothed his muscles when they spasm painfully.
No woman had touched him in tenderness in his adult memory before Sansa. Of course, he had spent his lusts with whores in his early manhood. But those experiences had been quick and shameful couplings in the dark. No sooner had he spent his seed then his spirit would be brought low by melancholy. He despised the lies they told him and the lies he told himself until finally he grew bored of the whole squalor of it all and what had been seldom indulgences ceased entirely long before he entered Joffrey's Kingsguard.
Even in his childhood, there had been a lack. His mother died giving birth to him. He had a sister who was older than both him and Gregor. She had been dead more than 20 years and when he thought of her at all it was only as a pure and gentle soul, a vision of the Maiden, rather than the real flesh and blood woman she must have been. He could scarce remember her face but he remembered the blanketing warmth of her arms as rocked him when he cried, her voice soothing him with sweet lullabies and hymns Gentle Mother, font of mercy ...
Sansa moved the contents of her solar into his bedroom so even when he had no need of her, they were together. He lay in bed listening to the sound of her quill on parchment or her voice reading a scholarly treatise on law or history or housekeeping. He was surprised at how learned she was, beyond what her station demanded, for she spoke and read several tongues that even her kingly brother had not mastered. He liked it best though when she put her duties aside and told him stories and sang to him for his amusement. She knew more stories and songs than anyone he had ever met and he wondered if some of her songs and stories were borne from her own expansive imagination for he saw how carefully and discreetly she was judging him and tuning her words in reaction to his enjoyment. It was a new experience. No one had ever expended that level of intensity of awareness on him. She spent her days looking at him and looking after him and the joy he felt under her gaze was powerfully transformational. For the first time in his tormented life, he knew himself to be at once both utterly vulnerable and yet completely calm ... and happy. The knowledge was astonishing - was it someone else who lay there? It could not be himself.