ASOIAF

A Thousand Stone

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Summary: Podrick struggles to reveal a great weight on his heart to Sansa, who in turn reveal a great burden on her own.

Sansa had only ever heard stories about the Westerlands. She had never been there, though in the very early days of her betrothal to Joffrey, she had not been immune to flights of fancy where she would find herself dreaming of visiting Casterly Rock, along the way, attending tourneys and feasts hosted by the gilded lords and ladies of the region. Upon arriving in the Vale, she'd once wondered if the mountain tops in the Westerlans were capped with snow no matter the season as well. Now, curled up in a ball and huddled close to Mya and Brienne in a tent (one of very many) high up in a windy mountain pass, Sansa thought back on those stories and wondered why she had been under the impression the Westerlands were warmer.

She tore herself from her thoughts when a human urge overtook her and she forced herself to crawl out from underneath the warmth of her furs and throw on a cloak, careful of her tentmates as she ventured outside. The wind sounded like a pack of hungry wolves out on a hunt, Sansa mused as she weaved between tents and firepits manned by guards towards the outskirts of the camp.

Tip-toeing out of a clutch of bushes several minutes later, Sansa found herself blushing, still unused to doing her business outside even after the many weeks that had passed since she began this campaign of hers. "Sansa?" A voice whispered to her right. Sansa turned to see Podrick fully emerge from the corner of a tent. He smiled sheepishly at her but he did not glance down at his feet, something Sansa was pleased to notice. "You finished with the bushes?" He asked with a nervous chuckle. Flushing, Sansa nodded her head. "Quite. I'll leave you to it. Good night, Pod." She said, combing her half-red, half-brown strands of hair out of her face.

Despite this goodbye, Podrick caught up to her not a few minutes later on her way back to her tent. Sansa wasn't really surprised by his speed. She had learned boys were a bit quicker than girls when it came to such things after weeks on living in close quarters with soldiers. "My tent is just across from yours." Pod must have felt the need to justify himself for walking with her. Sansa smiled at her friend and took his gloved hand in hers. "No need for excuses. You may walk beside me anytime you wish, Pod. You should know that by this point." She teased him. Podrick's cheeks reddened from more than the cold night air as he chuckled at her words.

They stopped in between their respective tents, but Sansa found herself not wanting to return to her bedroll just yet or leave Podrick's company. It had become difficult lately to have a few moments alone with this friend in particular. Jaime liked to tease so when he was around, Sansa and Podrick wordlessly agreed to stand a good distance apart and speak cautiously, lest they risk being made fun of. Brienne had a tendency to give them warning looks that embarrassed the pair into the same behavior. Mya liked Podrick and was kind to him, but a protective part of her seemed to keep her hovering over him and Sansa, to make sure they didn't get up into any mischief, Sansa was sure. Sandor seemed indifferent to the pair standing a bit close together and sharing whispers and smothered laughter, but Sansa knew that part of Podrick was uncomfortable with the Hound, so she tried to keep the two apart. It was very rare for Podrick and Sansa not to be in the company of at least one of their closer companions as well as each other, so there was little time for Pod and Sansa to share time together alone.

Sansa gently tugged at Podrick's arm. "Let's go sit by one of the firepits. It's very cold, even with the furs." She suggested. Podrick agreed to her request and together they found a dying pit that had been abandoned. Podrick went to work kindling it and soon it was roaring healthily once again. "Is it hard to light a fire?" Sansa asked him. She had seen him do it many times before. Sometimes it looked rather easy, while other times it looked very difficult. "It all depends." Podrick said with a shrug. "If it's windy like this, yes, it can be. But my cousin Cedric taught me a trick or two to get around things like wind and damp wood." Pod had told Sansa stories about Cedric Payne and his life squiring for him. He never spoke with any malice (just a tinge of disappointment, as if he'd been served roasted pigeon rather than a succulent boar), but Sansa was of the opinion that Cedric Payne had been a terrible kinsman when he'd lived and breathed.

"I hadn't thought Cedric did much aside from scream at you until his face turned blue." Sansa remarked. Podrick grimaced. "Oh, there was screaming. For every minute the fire went unlit, he'd scream louder and louder. I was lucky I got it started when I did." Sansa reached out to rest her hands on Pod's shoulder and knee. Pod smiled at her gratefully as he laid his own hand over top the one she had on his knee. It lasted only a minute, for the next moment his face contorted as if he'd suddenly recalled a chore he'd forgotten to do. He retracted his hand and pulled his whole body out of Sansa's reach and to the very edge of the log they sat upon. He tightly wrapped his arms around himself, cradling his own torso as he fixed his gaze on the fire.

"Pod?" Sansa asked worriedly. Podrick gave no reply. "Podrick?" She tried again.

Pod shook his head. "Do not comfort me, Sansa." He said.

"Why in the Gods' names not?" Sansa asked, her eyebrows now drawing together in confusion. "Cedric treated you terribly, Pod. You know that fact even if you do not say it plainly." Podrick continued to shake his head resolutely, not looking in her direction. "Maybe so, but what I gave him in return for all his cruelty makes me the greater villain." He whispered brokenly, his words near inaudible so close to the crackling fire and in the howling wind of the night. He said those words as if they had sat poised and heavy on his tongue for years.

"What did you give him, Pod?" Sansa asked, overcome with worry now. Her dread was nurtured when Pod once again shook his head firmly yet forlornly. He stood from the log and bowed lowly, not meeting his young queen's eyes. "I cannot say. Forgive me, I must take my leave now." He said, timidly making his retreat back to his tent, though each step was heavy like a condemned man's on the short journey to the chopping block. Sansa followed after him.

"Podrick," She called after him. "Podrick, please tell me."

"I mustn't." Podrick croaked.

"No, you must. I must know why you put so much blame on yourself. You are no villain, Podrick." Sansa insisted.

"But I am. Only a villain does what I did."

"Let me decide that, Pod. I have known enough villains to tell the difference by now."

"You will hate me." Podrick shouted, rounding on her with wide dark eyes brimming with tears. Sansa threw her arms around his neck, catching the squire in a tight embrace on instinct. Podrick attempted to gently pry himself free but gave up quickly in favor of nuzzling his nose in the brown bottom half of Sansa's hair and wrapping his arms around her waist.

Sansa was the first to pull away, taking Podrick's hand and leading him back to the firepit. She had Podrick sit down and knelt beside him, keeping one of his hands gripped firmly in hers and running the other's fingers through the dark hairs at the back of his neck. Podrick smiled thankfully down at her before that horrid look of recollection struck him again, forcing him to stare into the flames with remorseful black eyes.

"Podrick, I beseech you to tell me what you did so that I might erase this notion that you are a fiend from your mind." Sansa implored her friend desperately. Podrick looked down upon her again, each of his features outlined by pain. "You will be disgusted him with me." He argued in a cracking voice. "Never, Pod, never." Sansa told him, meeting his guilty eyes.

Podrick took a deep breath that rattled him as it exited his lungs. He licked his cracked lips and his eyes wandered downwards and came to land where his hands had white-knuckled grips on his quaking knees.

"When the fighting first broke out," Podrick began in a shaking voice. "House Payne was among the first to raise their banners and march east. Cedric and I were part of that host naturally. I was taken along to clean Cedric's armor and tend to his horse. That proved to be a lie very soon. Cedric took me into that first battle. Said war was an excellent opportunity to prove I wasn't totally worthless." Podrick's mouth formed a grim line, his features hardening in an unforgiving manor that Sansa had never seen from him before. "He always called me worthless. He was forced to take me in. Knights are usually paid to take on squires, but our House forced him to take me on free of charge and he never let go of that fact. He in fact held tightly to it even in his dying moments."

"You were a boy. He should have left you at camp with the other young squires and camp followers!" Sansa whispered, horrified by what she was hearing. Pod could not have been more than twelve when the war broke out. He was hardly twelve when he came to King's Landing. Sansa tried to imagine one of her younger brothers or Arya out there, surrounded by all that bloodshed and fear. It broke her heart. Podrick smiled thinly at her and released his vise grip on his own knee to give her hand a comforting squeeze.

He said nothing in reply to her words. He simply continued with his tale, his thin smile disappearing very quickly. "I nearly died more than a few times in that first battle. I didn't know what to do with the sword in my hands, the thought of killing a man didn't even cross my mind. All I remember is running and tripping over dead men and horses only to get back up and run some more. I lost Cedric in the mess of it all. Only after the battle was over, when our forces retreated, having lost, did I go to look for Cedric. As everyone else fled, I combed the battlefield for familiar armor and house colors. I eventually found him struggling to stand from his injuries." There was a long pause in between Podrick's words.

"I went to help him, and he struck me the instant he realized it was me. 'You worthless bastard!' he screamed at me. 'You cowardly, traitorous, ungrateful boy! You're no better or more loyal than your whore of a mother! What did you do? Where did you go? Did ya go fight alongside a richer knight hoping to cozy on up to him, leaving I who took care of you all these years to die?!'"

"Oh, Pod..."

"He went to go hit me again then." Podrick said, dead-eyed and his voice hollow now. He was far away from the firepit, back on that battlefield. "I held up my sword without thinking. To defend myself. Cedric looked at me as if I had gone mad, and then he got even angrier. Despite his injuries, he began to attack me. I was no fighter, still not much of one. All I did was dodge and I nearly ran away, leaving him to whatever the victors of the battle had in store for him. But I stayed because with each swing of that sword he made at me, I grew angrier myself. Angrier and angrier until I finally had enough.

"It's easy to disarm a man who can hardly stand. Even easier to knock him onto his back. Cedric looked up at me with shock when he hit the ground. I was shocked too. It passed for both of us within seconds. Cedric glared up at me with so much hate. 'Worthless half-lowborn bastard.' He spat." Podrick slowly turned his head and met Sansa's eyes. "I drove my sword through his throat, Sansa." He confessed through gritted teeth. "I drove my sword through my cousin's neck and I watched him choke on his own blood." It came out as a sob that second time.

"I'm nothing you ever thought me to be, and everything Cedric ever said I was. I am not a loyal squire. I'm traitorous. I'm cowardly. I'm ungrateful. I'm worthless. And I will rot in Hell for being a kinslayer." Podrick hid his face in his leather gloves as sobs shook his frame. Sansa looked on with horror, but not for the reason Podrick might have expected. Sansa threw her arms around her friend, startling him partially out of his fit.

"I told you you were not a villain." Sansa whispered in Podrick's ear when he tensed in her embrace. Confused sobs escaped him still. "But I...I murdered someone, Sansa. My own flesh and blood. Someone who cared for me all my life. I would have been strung up by my neck had Ser Lorimer not taken pity on me and remained silent on what he witnessed during the retreat." The squire protested.

Sansa pulled away from the embrace to smile thinly upon Podrick's face. "I feel it's fair I make some confessions of my own." She declared. "Then you will know who the true villain is of the two of us." Podrick smiled at her in a half-grateful, half-disbelieving manner. "I do not believe you could ever be a villain, Sansa. You had far more cause to kill Lord Baelish than I did to murder Cedric." He said.

"I wasn't referring to my disposal of Littlefinger." Podrick's eyes grew wide.

Sansa braced herself for the worst, though the thought of Podrick never again looking at her the same way pained her heart. This needed to be done, she knew. Podrick needed to know he was not a villain like Littlefinger, Joffrey, and Cersei. "When I realized I loved and needed to protect Sweetrobin, I put a plan into action that involved Lyn Corbray spying for me. I met him in secret. During one of these meetings, a maid stumbled upon us. A girl my age who had came to bring Corbray some ale. She thought she had come across something much different than what she had and quickly fled, promising never to tell anyone. Still, Corbray and I followed after her, stopping her at the top of a staircase. She promised once again to never say a word on the matter, pleaded not to be dismissed. She was deepy apologetic." Sansa felt her stomach clench, remembering that girl shaking in her grip. "She was frightened to lose her position. In the depths of winter, threat of poverty should have been enough for me to trust her to never speak a word of what she thought she saw. But that wasn't enough for me or Corbray," Sansa felt bile burn the back of her throat, recalling how she and that cretin had become conspirators in yet another crime in that moment of truth. "I asked the girl her name, because I wanted to know who I was apologizing to. Lavara, was her name. I looked her in the eye, because I owed her that, and said 'It is I who is truly sorry.' And I shoved her down the stairs. She went down with a scream that was cut short when her head hit against one of the stairs with a sickening crack. Then she was silent."

Sansa met Podrick's gaze again, not realizing hers had fallen to his neck until his fingers gently lifted her chin. "Thank you." Podrick whispered sincerely with a trembling smile. The tears that had been pricking Sansa's began to fall. The two hugged each other close, allowing themselves to find comfort in one another at last. "Are we terrible people, Sansa?" Podrick whispered into her hair moments later. "Do you think me a terrible person after what I just told you?" Sansa asked in turn.

"No, I could never think poorly of you. You did what you did to protect Robert Arryn, an innocent child. Lavara was an unfortunate sacrifice for that cause, and you are genuinely remorseful for your actions, I can tell."

"If I am not a loathsome soul than you certainly cannot be, Podrick. You ended the life of a man who did not deserve another living moment. And like me, you are genuinely remorseful." Replied Sansa.

"What if we're both wrong?" Podrick asked. "What if we're both terrible people and have blinded ourselves to the other's sins?"

Sansa gave Podrick yet another thin smile. "Than let us be sinners and make our penances together."

A/N: Thank you for reading. Please review!

*Direct sequel to "Lavander". Check it out if you haven't read it!

*Ser Lorimer was the hedge knight who looked after Pod after Cedric died and before he was given to Tyrion by Kevan, if you don't recall.

*The title refers to the unit of measurement, a "stone", and ties in with the immense guilt Podrick and Sansa feel for their actions.