DISCLAIMER: This story is entirely based on character[s] from George R.R. Martin'sA Song of Ice and Fire
Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sandor stood looking out the window of the solar of Winterfell, staring into the darkness instead of warming himself against the evening chill by the fiery hearth. It was still summer, but it had already snowed in the North, though the previous night's snowfall had melted off before midday. Nevertheless, it was a reminder.
Winter is coming were the words of his wife's House, the Starks of Winterfell; though Sansa was now a Clegane. She was his wife and the mother of his five children; soon to be six if…
If what, dog? If they live? Seven hells, don't let it be happening again.
The birth of their third child, their son Robb, had very nearly cost the little bird her life but she had recovered; she had recovered and regained her strength and in time had given him more sons.
She was younger then; and stronger…bugger yourself, dog: she's still young and strong.
Sandor was nigh fifteen years older than his wife and he had first known her when she was a girl; sometimes, he realized, he still though of her as that girl.
A pretty little talking bird…
He looked around the solar now. It had once been dark and empty and scarred by fire, much like himself, he thought archly. It was the Boltons who had burned and then occupied Winterfell and then abandoned it again when the Starks returned with the help of Stannis Baratheon and his army, and they had left nothing of the old days when the Stark family, a line eight thousand years old, had ruled the North, first as kings and then as wardens under the Targaryens.
It had taken them years to rebuild, and Winterfell would never reclaim all that it had lost but they had built a new life: Sansa and he and her brother Rickon with the help of her great-uncle Blackfish Tully and the Northern lords had fought to defeat their enemies and then struggled with the cold and deprivations of the long winter and their many losses.
But defeat them they had and Sansa had immediately set to rebuilding the North by strengthening their garrison, parceling out land to be tilled and by being a fair warden, as her father Lord Eddard Stark had been before her. She had let the wildlings from beyond the Wall settle on crofts and work in castles and villages, so long as they pledged to obey the laws. In time even men and families from the ruined Riverlands and parts of the Crownlands had migrated North to benefit from her generosity and her plans to rebuilt. Anyone willing to work hard and contribute to the rise of the North, and had fought against the Lannisters, was welcomed.
It had all been Sansa's work, he twitched a smile of pride now: that pretty little bird.
But winter would be coming again, as it always did for everyone in Westeros.
"My lord," the maester spoke from the doorway.
Sandor turned immediately; and he was daunted by the man's solemn voice and face. Maesters were solemn by nature, ti seemed to Sandor; and their learned seriousness and grey robes did nothing to dispel the impression.
"It's done then?" Sandor rasped gruffly, masking his worried heart behind a surly demeanor.
"The child is born, my lord; and Lady Clegane is well," the man assured him, knowing that was boundto be his greatest concern. "The child, however…" He looked even more somber now.
"It was too soon. She wasn't due to whelp for well over another moon's turn."
Sansa had left the great hall at midday to lie down and rest after sitting with her lord brother as he heard petitions and dispensed justice, but then her water had broken on the stairs. He had not heard her cry for help because he had been in the yard; but others had heard and she had been helped to their chamber where the maester had been summoned.
"That is correct, my lord," the maester acknowledged him sadly now. "I regret…the child is very small; and not strong. I would advise you go to them quickly."
Sandor was out the door and walking towards the stairs before the man had finished speaking. He took the steps two at a time, his heavy brow furrowing in concern at what he would find.
The room was quiet despite the presence of many women. Usually there were happy whisperings and soft exclamations over the babe and congratulations to the mother; but this lot was subdued. The only sounds were the cracking of the hearth fire and the soft shuffle of feet. The wildling Osha, who had attended every birth since their first winter in the castle after the young Starks had returned, was directing the others to finish making up the now clean bed and to gather up the basins and soiled linens and leave.
"I'll stay if ye likes, m'lady," she told Sansa now, "jes' 'til the maester comes back."
Sansa was still looking into the wrapped bundle in her arms; she had not yet looked up to see Sandor.
"No, thank you, Osha," she spoke absently and quietly, "I'm sure he will return with my lord."
Sandor cleared his throat and she turned her head to him and tried to smile.
"Sandor…" her voice seemed to catch. "We- we have another daughter." Her blue eyes did not shine with happiness but with near-tears, and her face was drawn despite her feeble attempt to smile for him. He steeled himself to approach her and as the wildling woman passed him in the doorway, he saw the solemn look of warning in her eyes.
He nodded encouragingly to Sansa as he stood by the bed. "We both said how we wanted another girl someday, little bird," he rasped.
Sansa bit her lip tremulously. "Oh, Sandor," she whispered now. "It's too soon: she-"
He came and sat on the bed beside her now, and looked anxiously into the nest of blankets. He saw an impossibly tiny face: dark pink and wrinkled, like a plucked chicken, with a spindly neck. Their last four children had been boys: round and robust; even their first, a daughter, had been healthy and strong. Sandor's heart sank and he swallowed hard as he realized why the maester had urged him to come quickly.
This one is truly a little bird, he thought, just a tiny hatchling…
"She…" he tried to think of something to say. She was his pup after all. "She is-"
"She is so small," Sansa whispered hoarsely as she carefully tucked the blanket around her newborn's face. "And she's so quiet; she hasn't cried or…or anything. The maester kept her from me at first, Sandor," she gasped as she held back a sob, "I- I think she was not breathing well." Her tears came now, silent and heart-wrenching. "He- he said to keep her warm…and to hope she would want to n-nurse; I've tried, Sandor, but she won't-" She broke off with a sob of helplessness.
Sandor immediately forgot his stony reticence and put his arms around her so that he was looking down at their child. The babe didn't squirm, or sigh, or turn her head to their voices as the others had.
Sandor had once thought that he was dying. He had sat under a tree on the banks of the Trident and felt his strength leave him and pain and fever take his senses. He had once thought the little bird might die, and he had sat with her endlessly as she rested and recovered from a different difficult birth that had nearly claimed her life. And he had lost his beloved sister to a violent brute of a brother when he had been too young and helpless to defend her. Each time he had felt an emptiness and loss that had overwhelmed him and had dragged him into a dark and silent netherworld of nothingness.
A man should be alive or dead; not stuck in some desolate in-between of not-knowing.
But this…this was something altogether more terrible. Sandor's guts churned and his head felt as though in a vise. What gods made a newborn babe to suffer: gave it life only to threaten to snatch it away? Must his new daughter's first moments in the world be a struggle? He was not one to sob as the little bird was doing; Sandor wanted to rage and to fight and to curse the gods he had denied most of his life. But he was not that man anymore, nor did he want to be.
"I'm so sorry, Sandor," Sansa whispered now through her tears. "I don't know why her birthing happened too soon."
"Don't you say you're sorry," Sandor ordered her. "You have given me another daughter, little bird: another dog-and-wolf pup. She'll fight…if she's anything like her mother." He kissed her now where her auburn hair stuck to her temple.
Sand looked down at the too-small babe again and she tightened her arms around the small, blanketed bundle of stillness and closed her eyes. "I pray you are right, Sandor; I pray that she will fight and live. Please," she pleaded openly though to no person or gods in particular, "oh, please."
Sandor understood. She was appealing to anyone or anything that would help.
He wished he knew what to do, or say, to assuage his wife's pain and breathe more strength into their tiny little daughter. Instead he held the little bird tighter, and hoped it would be enough.
….
The next morning dawned just as cold as the last, but the stables were oddly warm after the chill of the castle entrance and the yard. Sandor was not surprised though, he was used to the heat generated by the bodies of horses and the closeness caused by the smell of their dung. Soon it would be cleared away again by the stable boys to be carted out to the fields to fertilize crops. Meanwhile mounts nickered and shuffled as he made his way past the many tidy stalls to the end and looked into the last one.
Of course; where else would she be.
"Puppy dog?" he called somberly to the lithe, cloaked figure huddled on a hay bale in the corner. "Catya, come out now."
His daughter turned her face to him and just as quickly hid it again, but not before he'd had seen her big, tear-filled eyes looking helplessly at him. He sighed and opened the latch on the stall and slipped in. Her dark mare Lady lifted her head from het oats. Sired by his long-dead warhorse Stranger, Lady had been named for her mother Sansa's also long-dead direwolf. Recognizing him, the mare flicked her tail and went back to eating.
"Come here, girl," he rasped gently to his daughter as he sat next to her on the hay. He pulled her to him.
Catya turned to him and huddled close to her father, with her arms reaching around his waist and her head buried in his chest.
"Why, Papa…why did she have to die? It's not fair. P-poor Mama," she stuttered.
Sandor patted her shoulder now. "Aye, Puppy Dog, your mother is heartbroken." He said nothing of himself.
"She- she wanted a girl, didn't she?"
Sandor sighed. 'I expect we had both wished for another girl; hadn't you wanted a sister?"
Catya nodded against his tunic. "I- I guess so. I love my brothers-"
"I know you do, Catya; it's alright for you to want what you don't have; just don't let it mean everything to you. We don't always get what we want, my girl; best learn to live with that or you'll be sore unhappy in life."
"But…but why, Papa?" she whispered. "Mama wasn't sick, was she?"
"No; least the maester says not," he stroked her hair on top of her head. The rest, a glossy dark fall when loose, was bound in a long braid. Sandor knew if he looked at the end, he would find a ribbon that matched her gown. She was as much Sansa's daughter as his. "But sometimes a whelp's born too soon, and is not strong enough," he explained now. "The…your sister, Puppy Dog, was too small and weak to draw breath anymore."
He heard her take a deep breath. "That's not right," she whispered hotly.
"Happens to animals as well: every litter has a runt and sometimes it don't live; or sometimes it's the mother that can't survive the birthing. There's weak and strong in all that lives, girl. Valar morghulis is what folks say in the East; doubtless you've heard your aunt Arya, the queen, say it too. All men must die. I know this is your first time facing death, Puppy Dog; but we all die in the end; the weak just…sooner," he finished authoritatively. Sandor knew all about the weak and the strong, he knew that it was the way of the world: it had kept him alive while, on the inside, his bitterness at the knowledge had nearly killed him. "Don't mean you have to like it, girl; but it happens even if you don't."
"Was I stronger, Papa?" she asked without looking up at him.
Sandor hesitated, He knew Catya had been told that she been born early; when in fact he and Sansa had married late. Sansa had carried their firstborn when they'd wed in the godswood and had wanted no taint of bastardy on their daughter, for she knew how bastards, particularly girl bastards, were treated. Still, Sandor hedged at lying: he never lied, even to spare people's feelings but he'd hack off his own sword hand before he'd hurt his girl.
"You were strong," he answered simply. "You all were," he added because it was true.
"What will happen now?" she asked him, and he understood.
"She'll go to the crypts, with the rest of your mother's family," he rasped.
"Will she have a name? Mama said that you both wanted me to have a Northern name; but I remember she once told me that when she was a young, she thought to name a daughter Jonquil."
Sandor sighed again. "And so she did," he replied quietly.
"She thought you might not like it…a name from a song…"
Sandor thought a moment. "I've never had no use for songs, Puppy Dog; but I'd give your mother whatever she wanted," he replied firmly and he meant it.
Catya gave another heartfelt sob and so Sandor closed his eyes and waited before speaking again.
"Look at me now, girl," he asked her gently. "This is important."
His daughter leaned away and sat up straighter; she wiped her eyes before looking up. Sandor took her face in his great big hands and looked at her steadily. She was nigh two-and-ten; the same age he had been when he killed his first man, he remembered. But Catya had been given a better life than he had; all his children had, for which he was truly grateful. Though he may not admit it, or even realize it, the thought of children had frightened Sandor Clegane. The world he had known was a harsh and deadly place; and even family provided no safety or refuge. Thank the gods his wife had known a better life as a child of Winterfell, and had known how to provide that safe and loving shelter for their family. He had needed to watch and learn and in time to trust himself. He had loved his dog-and-wolf pups, every one of them; but even he realized that Catya was special to him.
Sandor was fairly certain that his daughter had not yet flowered; at least Sansa had not told him so. But she had grown into more of a woman, he saw that now. She had grown taller, though not as tall as her mother; and she had her pretty features: full lips, straight nose and luminous eyes. His daughter had grey eyes; not her mother's Tully blue, but his family's grey, and dark hair. All of his sons had inherited Sansa's blue eyes and various shades of her auburn hair. Only Catya had his Clegane colouring, or mayhaps she had it from her grandfather Eddard Stark. But when he looked at her, he saw something of himself, and of his own sister; and it had made them closer: a Papa Dog and his Puppy Dog.
"Catya…you are, and you always have been, all the daughter I could ever want. Aye, we wanted your sister, but not because we didn't have all we could ever hope for in you," his voice became gruff as he saw her tear up again but he took her hands in his and continued. "You and I have always have always been kindred, girl; but now I need you to be close to your mother, and to comfort her."
She looked at him curiously, her grief momentarily forgotten. "Of course I will, Papa."
"Her…her heart's broke, you see," he tried to explain hoarsely, "and she keeps it from me. Might be…it might be she'll talk to you…" His voice caught as he choked back a sob of his own, his great shoulders shook with the effort of restraining himself. Finally he dropped his head in his hands and wept.
Catya recoiled and stared in big-eyed shock at the sight of her fierce father crying before she softened and put her slender arms around him. She had to kneel on the hay bale to reach around him completely.
"Oh, Papa Dog…my poor Papa. It will be alright," she rocked and soothed him now, as she sometimes did for her baby brothers. "I'll comfort Mama…and you too. I love you, Papa. I'm sorry we've lost Jonquil," she whispered and he was racked by another sob. "I'm so very sorry, Papa…"
