DISCLAIMER: Characters etc. are GRRM's and his alone.
Written in response to the Sansa-sandor LJ community commentfic meme prompt: Their last conversation before she marries someone else.
By the time they'd found her, she was too far gone.
"Winterfell?" she had asked, confused. "Winterfell burned, was razed to the ground. The Vale is my home now."
The Kingslayer and his wench had sputtered and stuttered and generally had not known what to say, so Sandor had stepped forward. "What would you have us do, then, if not take you home?"
There was barely a moment's hesitation on the part of the little bird. "Kill Petyr Baelish," she stated solemnly. There was sadness in her eyes when she said it, but Sandor could see that her mind was made up. Jaime and Brienne wanted why's and Sansa Stark gave them - Littlefinger's betrayal of her father, his part in murdering Joffrey, pushing her Aunt Lysa out the moondoor, the slow and less obvious death he'd given her cousin Sweetrobin - but Sandor didn't care.
Killing was the sweetest thing there was, after all.
Until some months later, when he had her. Sansa Stark herself, there waiting in his bed when he returned from the practice yard one day. Part of him wanted to say he couldn't, or wouldn't...but she patted the space beside her invitingly and with a growl he took it.
And then took her.
And continued to do so nearly every day for several months...whenever she came to him, or whenever she called for him. Which was, admittedly, far more often than he would have expected - often enough to near amuse him, really.
Until she explained that she would be wed to Harrold Hardyng. "Harry the Heir, they call him," she admitted with a small smile. "I could fight him for the Vale...and possibly win. But I am tired of fighting, Sandor. A wedding sounds like quite a bit more fun."
He merely grunted his acknowledgement, refusing to look at her, not wanting her to know how this shocked him. Not wanting to admit to himself why it did so. They had just finished a particularly passionate bout of lovemaking, and suddenly he wondered if this decision of hers was why it had been so different from their recent more...tender...times together.
But when he did not speak, the little bird paused in the act of brushing her hair and turned toward him, eying him in the keen way he nearly hated, because he knew it was something that Littlefinger had taught her. "This will not change much between you and I," she promised, her voice soft, nearly a whisper.
Sandor bent with the pretense of pulling on his boots, not wanting her to see his face as he replied, "And if I put a bastard in your belly? A child who comes out looking like me?"
From the corner of his eye he saw her shrug. "There were not a few burly men in my family; I heard my uncle Brandon was one. And dark hair, grey eyes...it could be a Stark child, and no one would be any the wiser." She paused, then, "In fact, I feel I would prefer carrying your bastard to Harry's true-born babe."
He left it at that, but the thought of her wedding Harrold Hardyng - knowing that they would share a bed, and in fact share much, much more - ate away at Sandor.
And when the day of her wedding came, he knew what he must do. The gray of dawn still lingered in the sky when he knocked on the door to her bedchamber; she called from within and her smile nearly broke his heart when he entered...yet somehow, even that could not sway him in his decision.
"Have you come to wish me well?" the little bird asked, all pretty innocence.
"Aye," he rasped, though she knew right away that it was a lie.
"You're leaving," she stated, her voice dead, emotionless.
"Aye," he repeated, and had to look away from her.
"Why?"
Perhaps he'd wanted her to plead, but Sandor should have known that this Sansa Stark had no need for pleading.
And he'd always been honest with her, so why stop now?
"I've no desire to be your kept man, little bird. Not while you parade about on the arm of your handsome husband. I've a keep in the Westerlands that could use some tending to - "
"Since when have you ever desired to return to Clegane Keep?" she asked shrewdly.
Again he forced himself to tell her the truth. "Never said I had a desire to go back there."
"Then why go, Sandor? Why go, when I've told you things need not change between us? Not so much, anyway."
"I know," he admitted. "But...I can't."
The pause that stretched between them was a pregnant one; Sandor thought perhaps he would have to be the one to break it. But no - Sansa spoke first, finally. "Because you love me."
She waited, and he knew what she wanted him to say, yet that...that, he could not tell. That would be kept bottled up inside, for him to know, him to brood upon.
"You love me," she said again, and he heard the quaver in her voice. "As I love you."
He let those words hang in the air between them, relishing in their taste, their feel- but when he spoke, Sandor still could not bring himself to echo her sentiments. "Marry your 'Harry the Heir'. You will have the Vale, have children, have so much more than I could ever give you. You do not think it now, mayhap, but you will be happier without me here. Goodbye, little bird."
With that Sandor turned and left the room, striding away from her as fast as his legs could carry him.
Perhaps he'd wanted her to follow, to tell him she'd changed her mind and would not marry the handsome knight, to tell him that yes, he could give her more than Harrold Hardyng could give her.
But Sandor should have known that this Sansa Stark would do no such thing.