Sansa

After their new arrival had been hustled off for a hot bath and a meal, Sansa thought to finish mending one of Jon's tunics as a way of keeping herself occupied. That time of day, between dinner and supper, most everyone was busy with their daily habits, and she was alone in the great hall.

Not so great, she thought with a tiny smile, surveying her dingy surroundings. Low-ceilinged, small-windowed, with no paneling or drapery to soften the stone floor and walls, it was a grim and unwelcoming place. She tried to settle in on the wooden bench at the long table, but after an hour of placing clumsy stitches she gave up and paced before the feeble fire struggling to warm the desolate room.

Seeing the Hound again had Sansa reeling, thrown back to her days as Joffrey's betrothed, when Sandor had seemed to dog her every step, when he had rescued her and rescued her and rescued her. He had been often on her mind in the intervening days: what he had been doing after leaving her in King's Landing? Was he still drinking too much wine? Had he really kissed her, that last night on her bed in the dark, when her eyes had been closed and she'd wished, oh, she'd wished…

At first, she'd dismissed such wonderings as panicked flights of fancy after a moment of duress, but when she'd dreamt of him coming to her bed as her husband, she'd had to admit to herself that he had been far more to her than just a flight of fancy. He'd taught her the reality of her delusions of nobility, of how beauty above could hide foulness below, and how the greatest chivalry could hide within the most unknightly figure imaginable.

It had only been more recently, after hearing her aunt's noisy wailing while coupling with Petyr Baelish, and then the minstrel offering to make Sansa sing likewise, that she had put another meaning to Sandor's repeated urgings to sing for him. And in spite of everything, in spite of all the fear and pain, in spite of Ramsay, she would remember Sandor's rough deep voice commanding her to sing, and feel a wild throbbing between her legs.

She didn't think she'd ever be able to sing, and not think of that. Of Sandor in her bed, making her sing and sing and sing…

"Milady. A word, if it please you."

Sansa blinked and started, jostled from her thoughts by Brienne, standing rigidly at her side.

"Of course, Brienne." The other woman looked concerned. "What's wrong?"

"I have deep misgivings about having the Hound fight with us, milady. He was a Lannister guard for many years—"

"Six," Sansa murmured. She'd asked Shae, once. "Not so very many."

"—and is known for his ferocity in battle—"

"Which makes him an exceedingly fine ally."

Brienne's lips compressed before she forged on. "—and therefore I think it likely that he is here either as a double agent for the Lannisters, or possibly the Boltons, or…" Here, she permitted herself a dramatic pause for effect. "…or he has nefarious purposes of his own." She scowled darkly. "I don't like how he looks at you."

"'A hound will die for you, but never lie to you'," Sansa replied automatically, steadfastly ignoring any reference to how he might look at her to repeat the phrase he'd told her once, what seemed so long ago. "Sandor's no liar. He's rough, and possibly mad, but he's no liar. He would not play me false."

Brienne stared at her, then, slowly, past her, and Sansa felt a shiver across her flesh, an exquisite awareness that raised every tiny hair on her neck.

And she knew he was at the doorway behind her, and had heard every word.

Her guard's intense gaze flickered back to her lady, a wordless inquiry: should she leave them alone? Sansa met her eyes, nodded, so Brienne compressed her lips even further and departed the room.

Sansa shivered again, unable to turn and face him, so she focused on one stone in the wall that was a paler gray than the others, focused until her eyes burned. He did not speak or move; he hardly seemed to breathe.

But then he stepped closer to her, and she could feel the heat of him all down her back. Fabric draped around her, and she saw that he'd put his cloak over her shoulders.

"You're cold," he murmured, that rasp of a voice that dragged over her skin like rough silk.

She wasn't, but was not going to tell him so. She gathered folds of the cloak in her hands, pulled it closer. He hadn't worn it long enough to imprint his scent on it yet. A shame, that.

"I still have the cloak you gave me in King's Landing," she told him. "Or a piece of it, at least."

It hadn't been practical to keep the entire cloak; made for a man the Hound's considerable size, it was big enough to cover a horse. She'd salvaged as much of it as she could, the largest part without any rips or rents. She reached into the neck of her gown and produced a folded square of white wool, not large but neatly hemmed all round.

"I washed it the best I could. I didn't want to keep the blood and soot on it." She turned and held it out for him to see.

His eyes, those gray eyes of his, like old steel, flicked down to the square of cloth for the barest second before returning to her face. "What's in the corners?"

Sansa smiled at the handiwork she hadn't been able to resist adding to each corner.

"Dogs," she said. "Black ones. I thought to dye it yellow, so it would match your heraldry, but it didn't seem right." She lifted her eyes to his. "It was white when you wore it, and when you left it with me. I thought it should stay that way."

Still he said nothing. It was impossible to discern what he was thinking; his face was as blank and impassive as a stone statue.

"I did lie to you, once," he said suddenly. "When I told you that killing is the sweetest thing."

Sansa couldn't move, could hardly breathe. He said no more, but she understood.

"I think," she said, very gently, "that you meant it at the time. So it's not quite a lie. You just changed your mind." She cocked her head a little to the side. "It's fine. We all change our minds. I certainly have. Many times."

She said no more, but he understood; she could see it in those red-black eyes.

Davos entered the room, then, and the moment was lost. She offered the older man a polite smile.

"Your brother wants to discuss some matters," Davos said. "He'll be joining us presently."

Sansa took her seat on the bench and took up Jon's tunic once more. Sandor took up a position just behind and to the left of her, putting her in mind of how he'd guarded Joffrey: close, watchful, but unobtrusive. He had excellent instincts, she thought.

One by one, the others entered the room: Jon, Edd, Brienne with her omnipresent shadow, Tormund. A squire arrived with the castle's ghastly ale, passing out mugs which everyone took more out of habit, and to have something to do with their hands, than out of any genuine thirst or fondness.

"I imagine we have many questions for each other," Jon said, ever the brave one, ready to plunge forth.


Sandor

Sandor put down his flagon of the most disgusting ale he'd ever had the misfortune to put in his mouth and aimed a flinty glare at Sansa's half-brother.

"Why," he asked, his voice calm but scathing, "the fuck is she here?"

Snow's spine snapped straight, almost audibly. "You know why we're here."

"No," and there was a world of condescension in his voice, "why is she here? When she should be somewhere far from the battlefield, somewhere safe?" His scornful gaze swept over Snow, over Brienne, over Davos, over the odd red-haired Wildling who stared at Brienne like he were starving to death and she a juicy haunch of beef, to the girl herself, luminous as ever in spite of the bruise-like circles of exhaustion beneath her eyes.

"Don't talk about me as if I'm not here," Sansa said sharply, her voice a blade as she twisted around to glare at him. "They're doing this for me, in my name. They could die. For me. The least I can do is be here with them, when they do."

"So you can all die together?" he sneered, lifted his mug, remembered how foul its contents, put it back down. "And your family's birthright with you?"

"Ramsay's got our little brother," she told him. "I have no faith that he'll let Rickon live, whether we win or lose. Rickon might already be dead, in fact. Bran, too. I'm all we can count on, and if we lose here—"

"If we lose here, at least you'll still be alive, can still try again."

"With what army?" she shouted, standing, her face reddening. "With what supplies? What allies? We have scraped together everything we have. Who and what you see here is it. This is all we have, all we are. If we lose this battle, it is over. Everything is over."

Sandor opened his mouth to argue, but Sansa plowed ahead, over him.

"And if we lose, if I don't die in the battle, I'll be killing myself shortly after it's over, because I will never return to Ramsay." Her hands were fisted in the cloak he'd draped over her, but they might as well have been clenched around his heart. She stood there, silent and pale, and there was so much she wasn't saying.

He slammed the mug onto the table. The edges of Sandor's vision darkened as a hideous thought crawled out of the murk of his mind and scraped free to bang on the walls of his skull. He shut his eyes, as if that could somehow block out the image behind them.

"What did he do to you?"

He knew he sounded barbaric, like an animal, snarling like a wild thing, but oh, gods… no, let it not be what he thought—

He fought to calm his breathing for long moments, then opened his eyes to find Sansa shooing the others from the room and shutting the door behind them.

"He did nothing but assert his marital rights as my husband." She turned back to him, stepped right up to him as if he weren't terrifying to look at and she weren't in the least afraid of him. Her voice was distant, like she were speaking to him from across a deep valley. She clamped her jaw tightly, then, and averted her gaze. She didn't want him to see, but he knew. He knew.

He drew his sword, chest heaving like a bellows. Sansa didn't even twitch, just watched him. Her calm acceptance of the violation she'd suffered at Ramsay's hands pushed Sandor over the edge he'd been teetering on. Overcome, he vented his frustrations on the worn old table in the middle of the room, hacking it smaller and smaller until it was mere flinders on the flagstones.

The sword clattered to the floor from his hand, and he hung back his head as despair wracked him. "I knew I should have taken you with me, should have just tossed you over my shoulder and left with you. I'd have kept you safe, you'd never have been—"

He couldn't even say it. He'd tried the best he could to protect her from Joffrey, but failed when it mattered the most. How he'd live with himself, he'd never know.

A soft touch on his hand, and he opened his eyes once more. Sansa stood beside him, her little hands cupping his big rough paw.

"Thank you," she whispered, staring down at where they touched. "For all you did for me before, in King's Landing, and now." She glanced at the former table. "I've never been able to… act out my fury. I've wanted to." She looked up, now, her eyes as blue as summer. "I've wanted to destroy the world, since… Joffrey. Since Ramsay. I couldn't. I'm not strong enough. But you are. You're strong enough to do it for me."

Sandor began to tremble, just a little. In that moment, he felt strong enough to destroy the world, then rebuild it anew, just for her.

"Will you do it for me?" Miraculously, impossibly, she brought his hand up, touched her lips to his fingers, brushing over the scars decorating his knuckles with knotted white lines. Was it in gratitude, for past acts? In supplication, for future ones? Sandor did not know, would never know, did not care.

"You were my shield, once," she continued. "Will you be my shield again?"

He wanted to say, I never stopped being your shield, I was always your shield, but it wasn't true. He'd left her, and she'd had no shield at all when she most needed one. He'd not be making that mistake again.

The door creaked open, and Snow poked his head in. Above him, Brienne was doing the same. Their faces were a perfect picture of incredulity as they took in the pile of splinters where before had been a table, and Sansa holding the hand of the ugliest imaginable warrior.

"It depends on if you can meet my price." His voice was hoarse from the growling, before. They all re-entered the room, cautiously, quietly, afraid to disturb the half-feral dog.

"What is your price?" Snow asked. His face was guarded, tight; he had few resources left to spare for an exorbitant mercenary fee.

Sandor glanced at Sansa. She had released his hand, stepped away, but still he felt her on his skin. The heat of her, hands and lips, had burned him raw as actual flames never could.

"Her," he said. "My price is Sansa."

Brienne sucked in a breath, and her hand came to rest on the fancy gold-hilted sword at her hip.

"What do you mean?" Snow demanded. "Sansa… as your liege? You want to be her personal guard?"

"Her man. Her husband." Sandor felt his face heat, ashamed to be embarrassed, at revealing so much to these strangers, knowing his reputation and their opinion of him. He was not a forthcoming man, could hardly tell what his own thoughts and feelings meant. All he knew is that Sansa was his to protect, had always been that; that he had failed her once but never would again; that he would die defending her. To do that, he needed to have the right to be at her side always, at all hours of the day and night.

"She's already got a husband." Snow looked like he wanted to spit in disgust. "She's married to Ramsay."

"She'll soon be a widow." It was not so much projection as promise, and he would make it a fact. He'd never meant anything so much in his life.

"Absolutely not," Brienne snapped. "You cannot imagine that—"

"Yes."

Sansa's single word made her guard fall silent in shock. Then: "Milady…."

"Sandor has presented his terms. I have accepted them." Sansa turned to face him. "After the battle, if we both survive, and Ramsay is dead, I will marry you. Right there on the battlefield, if you wish it."

Had she always been this tall? This determined? She'd grown much in the time they'd been apart.

He'd never imagined that his quaking little bird could sing so loudly.