Full of Terrors
Oneshot. 2800 words. San/San.
The godswood was still Sansa's favorite place in Winterfell; not because she prayed to the gods—for she hadn't prayed to the Old Gods or the new in many years—but because it still reminded her of her mother. Sitting under the budding boughs of the heart tree, it wasn't difficult to imagine Catelyn Stark sitting next to her with her needlepoint and her quiet reserve firmly in place.
If she closed her eyes and listened, she could almost make out the sounds of Robb and Jon chasing her through the trees. They were younger then, a simpler time, when Arya was only barely walking and her oldest brother hadn't been called away by familial duty and training; when her family hadn't been rife with politics and death; when it was still alright for her to run with her skirts around her knees, and her hair to be a tangled mess down her back, and her bare feet to be splattered with mud.
If she listened hard enough, she could even hear her mother's ghostly voice in the distance.
"Run, Sansa. They'll catch you!"
The distant bay and snarl of dogs pulled Sansa from her reverie. Overhead, mockingbirds tittered in the trees before taking flight. All else was silent.
Sansa opened her eyes only to stifle her own scream. Catelyn Stark sat beside her, needlepoint in her lap, smiling warmly at her daughter. She fondly petted Sansa's fiery auburn plait as she rasped, "Run, Sansa." Sansa's gaze was rooted to the wide, smooth line of red weirwood sap dripping down her mother's neck, slipping under the collar of her dress and staining her neckline. Sansa reached a hand up to wipe away the drippings.
Her fingers came away shaky, covered in blood. Her mother rasped through the wound in her neck; blood flowed more quickly across her pale skin, soaking her dress. The sound of snarling dogs came closer, their heavy paws pounding on packed earth. Catelyn looked up, and Sansa followed her gaze through the boughs of the heart tree to the sky where mockingbirds circled like birds of prey.
"Mother —"
"Run, Sansa. They'll catch you!"
Catelyn's fingers caught Sansa's hand in a steely grip and pulled her to her feet. "Run. Run!"
Sansa hoisted up her skirt in two trembling hands and turned to go, but not before watching rabid dogs — dogs from their own kennels — overtake her mother. She let out one strangled wail before digging in her feet and propelling herself forward.
Finished with her mother, the dogs gave chase. The barking and baying, surely someone had heard — surely someone would come — the gates were just ahead, the kennel masters must know the dogs had escaped —
With a wild, tinny screech, a ridicule of mockingbirds soared down from above, pecking at her hands, clawing at her face, pulling her hair. Heedless of her lacerations, Sansa waved her hands wildly, attempting to strike the birds from the air. They retreated only to regroup, snipping at her clothes and pulling at her hair with tiny taloned feet. Through the godswood gate and into the courtyard, Sansa fought the birds with all her might. Behind her, the dogs closed the distance between them.
Teeth closed tight on the hem of her dress, and Sansa gave a panicked cry as she ripped the fabric from the dog's jowls. She could feel them nipping at her heels. Terror worked its way up through her chest and out of her throat in a blood-curdling scream.
The decapitated head brought her up short. She stumbled to a halt as she stared into the vacant, dead eyes of her older brother. The pack of dogs plowed into her from behind, baring her to the ground in a brutal heap, the pain only barely tempered by the agony in her heart.
She couldn't take her eyes from Robb's as the dogs shredded her dress with their claws, ripped at her hem with their teeth, scored the skin of her back in their haste. She screamed, cried, struggled beneath the dogs' oppressive weight and the agonizing frenzy of their assault. They were going to tear her apart, eat her alive, and there was nothing she could do — nothing that could tear her gaze from Robb's —
A shrill whistle pierced through Sansa's fear. The dogs fell silent and in an instant their weight was gone. The tortuous pain of their aggression remained in her skin as she pushed herself slowly to her knees. A group of figures stood in shadow, barring her entrance into the Great Keep. Each figure held a severed head by the hair.
Sansa reached out with trembling fingers to cup her brother's pale cheek. She choked on a sob as she bent her forehead to his. It had been many years since she'd first mourned the death of her oldest brother, but the ache persisted as if it were new.
"I always wanted to serve you his head." Sansa froze, wide-eyed, as recognition dawned. That voice was one which hadn't assaulted her ears for some time — and when last she heard it, he was strangling to death.
Joffrey Baratheon stepped from the shadows, adorned in the gold brocade of his wedding attire. Sansa felt rung out and dry, as though the fear had leached away all the tears she had to shed. She only stared up at him in horror as another figure emerged from the shadow of the Great Keep.
Ramsey Bolton gave an insidious giggle as Rickon's head was flung at her. Her youngest brother was so much older than when she'd seen him last, but still so young —
"Don't forget the mutt," came a booming voice. Ser Gregor Clegane, towering mightily over his companions, stepped forward to bodily throw the head of a direwolf at Sansa's crouched form. Sansa wrapped blood-stained fingers in the matted fur at Lady's neck.
"What do you want from me?" Sansa howled.
"It isn't that I wanted anything from you." Petyr Baelish stepped forward into the light, hands clasped behind his back in a familiar posture. The gilt mockingbird pin gleamed prettily at his throat. It wasn't difficult for Sansa to summon the hatred she felt for Littlefinger, and she cast around for a weapon — the tip of a broken practice sword, a thrown horseshoe, a stick, anything that could be used to maim the man before her. "No, Sansa, it isn't that I wanted anything from you. It's that I wanted everything … from her."
Littlefinger revealed his hands and the head he held between them. Catelyn's auburn tresses were tangled in his tapered fingers, and her face was frozen in permanent fear, mouth gaping around a silent scream.
"Seems a waste to be rid of her," Littlefinger continued as in one smooth motion he lifted his arm and loosed her mother's head. She fell short, and Sansa scrabbled forward to retrieve her. "But I've no more use of her."
"You're cruel, Littlefinger." The low, smooth voice of Cersei Lannister had always sent fear skittering up Sansa's spine. As she moved forward with Ned Stark's head held cruelly in her grasp, Sansa was sure her heart had stopped beating. "Though I suppose this makes me crueler."
Watching her father's head sail through the air took Sansa back to the day he'd lost it. The hope she felt while standing with the royal house on the steps of the Sept of Baelor as her father confessed to sins that were never his was almost tangible. He'd be cast out, but he would be spared. He would be alive — far away but alive. And life would go on as it should.
She'd been a naive little girl.
Even as the axe was lifted, even as it came down, even as her father's head was finally separated from his body, it hadn't felt quite real, like a horrible dream from which she couldn't quite wake. It was only as the roaring and the cheers in the crowd had filtered back in to her ears that she fully recognized her new reality: her father was dead, her family was fractured, and nothing would ever be the same.
Ned's head landed short of Sansa and rolled to a stop face up. Her father looked much the same as he had the last time she'd seen him — head impaled atop the wall of the Traitor's Walk in the Red Keep. Sansa remembered the fury she'd felt then, the quiet rage that tore through her breast as she was forced to look at her father, the madness that possessed her and forced her feet forward with every intention of knocking Joffrey Baratheon straight from that walkway —
"You bitch," Sansa seethed. "YOU BITCH!"
Cersei gave an indulgent chuckle as Sansa pushed herself heavily to her feet, the wounds on her back screaming with the effort. How many times had she fantasized about killing the queen? How many times had she envisioned what it would be like to wrap her fingers around her throat and squeeze the life out of that miserable bitch?
"You ruined my life," cried Sansa. One agonizing step after the other brought her towards the barbarous group of killers. "You could have stopped this. You could have stopped it all. I want them back. Bring them back!" She wanted to break the amused smirk off the queen's callous face. She wanted to chip away at her, piece by piece, the way Sansa had been broken down, until there was nothing left of Cersei but dust.
Closer, closer Sansa stumbled until her hands were gripping Cersei's dress. Unable to stand the pain, Sansa collapsed to her knees, fingers twisted in the rich, dark fabric of Cersei's skirts. A sob wracked her body as the queen looked on in disgust.
"They're all gone. I only ever wanted my family back. I —"
"You were much more fun when you were mine." Ramsey's bored murmur preceded his commanding whistle, and Sansa whipped around in time to see his starved dogs lunge at her once more.
The fire in the grate had burned down to embers, allowing little light to illuminate her chambers. Sansa's heart beat an erratic tempo against her breast and she realized upon waking that she was gasping for breath as though she'd been running.
"What is it, little bird?" The deep, sleepy rasp tickled the flyaway wisps at her ear. She was dimly aware of her husband's arm wrapped around her middle and his hand cradling the new life in her belly.
"I had an awful dream. A nightmare," she murmured as she turned in his arms to face him. "Rabid dogs and a tree full of mockingbirds were chasing me through the godswood."
Sandor cracked his crooked grin as he replied, "Your sister gutted the last mockingbird that flew this far north." Sansa rested her forehead in the center of his chest, delighting in the familiar comfort of his scratchy chest hair and the warmth of his skin.
"My mother was there — her throat was slit but she was warning me to run. Run before they caught me."
Sandor's arms tightened around his wife. He pressed his lips to her hair even as his jaw tightened in rage.
"The dogs took her. I think they were Ramsey's dogs. He used to starve them so they would hunt and eat people. They took her first and then they came after me. They caught me eventually and — and hurt me. It felt so real, like a thousand lashes on my back, like the skin was being flayed from my body —"
Sandor ran a soothing hand down the smooth, unmarked skin of his wife's back.
"—but then there were heads. All their heads." Sansa squeezed her eyes closed to quell a fresh wave of tears. "My brothers', my parents', even my direwolf Lady. They threw them at me like some sort of game." Her voice was thick with unshed tears and she was unable to keep them at bay. "Joffrey was there, he threw Robb's severed head at me—"
"Dead, little bird," Sandor confirmed. This was a script he knew well, a confirmation he provided more nights than not. "Poisoned at his own wedding."
He couldn't cure his wife's night terrors, but he could reassure her every time she woke.
"And then — then Ramsey Bolton, with his dogs and Rickon —"
"You fed him to his own starving dogs."
"Your brother, the Mountain, he — he had Lady, I don't know why, but —"
Sandor's jaw tightened once again. The scar cutting through his side itched every time he thought about his cursed brother. Every time he popped up in one of Sansa's nightmares.
"Dead. I killed him myself. Took his own head from his wretched body," he grumbled into her hair. Sansa shuddered and pulled herself closer, pressing her body snugly against his long, muscular frame. Her hand found that same scar and she traced it gently from his abdomen, around his side, to nearly his spine. The Mountain had nearly cleaved him in two.
If not for the Lord of Light, Sandor would be gone.
"Petyr Baelish had my mother's head—"
"Thanks to you and Arya, he'll never manipulate his way into power ever again."
"The queen — Cersei. She had my father's head." At her words, Sandor swallowed thickly. Her nightmares varied in which of her tormentors appeared, but there was always one constant — Eddard Stark's presence. His execution was an experience the two of them shared. Years later her anguished screams, her pleas for mercy, still echoed prominently in his memory.
The overwhelming guilt he still felt was a wall he had not yet managed to overcome. Guilt at not being able to shield her from witnessing her father's beheading; his failure to save her from the terror and abuse inflicted on her by their errant boy-king; his inability to steal her away from King's Landing when he had the chance.
Looking down at his wife's trembling form, Sandor wondered if she would over be able to overcome her feelings of guilt either.
Despite her willingness to obey orders or her pleas for mercy, her father's head was taken. No matter how well she behaved, her oldest brother and her mother had been murdered. Her escape from her — her rapist — had eventually led to the death of her youngest brother.
It didn't matter that all of those things were beyond her control and at the influence of other people unforeseen circumstances — guilt riddled her all the same. And while the deaths of nearly all her immediate family had brought unspeakable pain, it was the first-hand witness of her father's execution that plagued Sansa the most.
"Even when they're dead, they won't leave me be," Sansa lamented in a whisper. Sandor lifted her face to his so that he could peer into her vivid blue eyes.
"The lot of them are dead and rotting like they deserve, little bird. Everyone who caused you pain and took away your family are dead. They can't hurt you out here anymore. Maybe one day the night terrors will go away. Maybe they never will. Either way, I'll be here when you wake up, and soon enough so will our babe." Sandor slipped his hand down to cup her belly with his palm once more.
"The world is a safer place now, and I intend to make sure it stays that way," Sandor continued. "Nothing can ever replace the family you've lost. But maybe —" He averted his gaze. He would never be particularly proficient at expressing himself. The words fell clumsily from his lips and his ears burned fiercely. "Maybe after this babe comes, we keep growing our little family. Maybe our family grows so big there's no more room in your dreams for all those old ghosts."
Sansa let her tears fall unfettered. Affection and love swelled in her breast, and finally she felt at peace. She had everything she wanted at her fingertips — a simpler life, perhaps, than the one she'd envisioned all those years ago traveling to King's Landing when she was just a little girl: fewer family members, stolen innocence, a hardened adolescence she never could have expected.
But the pack survives.
She had her home, the people she loved and who loved her in return. There was peace across the kingdom.
She had Sandor Clegane.
And with enough nurturing, the pack would grow.
Lifting her hand to his stubbled cheek, Sansa pulled him to her for a searing kiss. "You are by far my favorite husband," she joked, lips quirking into something of a smile. Sandor chuckled and tucked her into his side.
"Get some sleep, little bird."
Sansa nestled her face against his chest and let sleep overtake her. Her terrors plagued her no more.
Fin.
A/N :: Sooo this turned into something I … had not intended. I started this with the intention of exploring some elements of PTSD Sansa may have had or still has after having watched her own father beheaded right in front of her. I feel like I touched on that … it still ended up being SanSan fluff (can I even still call this fluff?)
In any case, tell me what you think.
If you're into Arya/Gendry, keep an eye out for a companion piece to this one exploring how Arya deals with her trauma.