The evening passed as per Sansa's expectations. Right on schedule, she was shooing away her new maid, Sally, after the girl had helped extract her mistress from the devil's contraption that was her corset. Sansa ambled from the dressing room to her bed chamber, where Sandor awaited her as always to brush her hair one hundred strokes. She divested herself of the rest of her clothing while he worked her curls free of tangles.

His big hands were deft as they drew the engraved silver brush through the auburn locks, and when he was done with that, they were a welcome warmth on her poor skin, soothing away the red marks left by the whalebone stays. She felt arousal spark within her as his hands left her ribs and climbed to her breasts, cupping from behind, fingers pinching and rolling her nipples, making them bud like little red berries.

"Ssssandor," she sighed, leaning back in full knowledge that his brawny frame would easily support her weight. Against her bottom, his shaft was long and thick, and she swayed from side to side to tease him.

He rumbled in her ear, a wordless growl that made heat build between her legs. His hands left her breasts to clamp her hips, and he drew her back against him so closely not even a whisper could have fit between them. Would Sandor take her this way, tonight? From behind, her hands braced against the wall as he pounded into her?

Or perhaps he would bend her over the arm of the settee, and curl his big body around her and claim her utterly, in the way only he could do.

"No," he gritted out, spinning her to face him. "I want to look at you while I fuck you."

Heat streaked through Sansa's belly, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.

"Yes," she breathed, and brought her arms around him, her hands restless as they caressed the robust hills and hollows of his muscled back and shoulders. His mouth claimed hers, fearless, demanding, and she answered his demands with some of her own. She wanted to see him too, wanted that beloved visage a mere inch from hers, within kissing distance as he stroked into her, and so she pulled away, panting, and took his hand to lead him to the bed.

She lay back, expecting him to climb up her body like the sleek predator he was, but instead he merely parted her legs and positioned himself comfortably between.

"Ah," she said with a smile, "you're in the mood to take your time, tonight."

"I've wanted the taste of you in my mouth all day," Sandor declared, and ducked his head to take a long lick up the very center of her.

Sansa mewled, head tossing back as her hips undulated in response. He was so good at this, and seemed to actually relish it, just as much as she enjoyed lavishing attention on that splendid male part of his, lashing it with her tongue and watching as he relinquished control to her. Sandor shaking in climax was the most beautiful, arousing sight she'd ever been privileged to observe.

He groaned into the wet pink folds beneath his tongue and drew away, sitting back on his heels while he wiped her essence from his chin.

"Sansa," he said, his tone darkly commanding, "suck me."

She went to him willingly, settling herself between his knees before filling one hand with his erection and the other with his heavy balls, rolling and squeezing until he hissed. Then she deigned to take him in her mouth, fitting the smooth bell of his cock-head between her lips and sucking delicately.

Sandor groaned and threaded his fingers through her hair, displacing any order he might have given it while brushing it, and guided the motion of her mouth around his shaft. She loved when he set her pace, loved noticing the slow build of speed as his desire burned hotter. When he could no longer bear it, he pulled her off and brought her up so he could kiss her lips, tongue thrusting in imitation of his cock's motion just moments before.

"I want you," Sansa gasped into his mouth, her hands clutching at his wide shoulders, at his hair. Her nails dug into the firm rounds of his buttocks, so frantic was her need.

Sandor tumbled her back into the pillows. Their limbs, so finely attuned to each other by that point, arranged automatically so that her thighs were spread wide around his hips and their arms wound around the other.

When he sank into her, they both moaned in abandon, giving themselves entirely over to passion, wholly submitting to each other in love and desire. They were not capable of conscious thought, just rutting mindlessly against each other in the desperate pursuit of pleasure.

"Sansa... god, I... Sansa, l-love, love y-" Sandor's climax hit with the force of a train, his lips flying between her legs as he pounded himself toward rapture.

His words slammed her into her own crisis and she writhed beneath him in a frenzy of sensation and elation. Her nipples beaded almost to the point of pain, dragging against his chest as he thrust and heaved against her. She could feel her body clench and clamp around him, could feel the hardness of his shaft filling her so exquisitely as she claimed paradise.

"Sandor!" she cried. "Sandor, Sandor!"

When it was over, they lay there, damp and exhausted in each other's embrace, for long minutes. Sandor was careful to prop himself on his elbows, not to crush her with his considerable weight, and Sansa busied herself with tracing his features with her fingertips, feeling as if she were glowing with the force of a thousand candles.

"You are everything to me," she whispered.

But instead of answering in kind, Sandor shut his eyes and turned his head to the side in a wince, sitting back and drawing himself out of her. Sansa's hips danced at that last drag of his hardness within her still-sensitive tissues and the way his fluids seeped from her, and he groaned at the sight, his big body shaking as he fought for control.

"Little bird," he began when he had mastered himself once more, "I have made a decision."

She blinked up at him, concern springing to life at the flatness of his voice, usually so rich.

"That sounds serious," she replied lightly, trying to preserve the mood.

"It is." He got off the bed and handed Sansa her dressing gown, a gorgeous confection of azure silk that Sandor usually preferred to take off rather than put on her.

Worry began to sour her stomach, and she stood, pulling the robe's sleeves up her arms and wrapping the silk tightly around her waist.

"What is wrong?" She took a step closer to him and lifted a hand to cup his ruined cheek. "Sandor, you're frightening me."

He took her hand in his big rough paw and pressed his mouth to her fingers, kissing them in a single scorching press of lips.

"Sansa, I've decided that you must marry Blackhaven."

Her mouth fell slack with shock. For a long moment she just gaped at him in utter disbelief.

"But... I love you," she whispered. "I love you, as you love me. I know you do."

He flinched back as if she'd slapped him in the face.

"Yes," he rasped. "You're the only good thing that has ever happened to me, and in another world, you'd have been mine, truly mine. But in this world, I am dead, a thousand years or more, and you..."

"And I, what?" Sansa demanded, her voice clogged with tears. She swiped at her cheeks as the tears rolled down, smearing the moisture around more than drying it.

"And you are not."

"I can't help that." She felt defensive, like he was accusing her of an error she had no way of erasing. "I would do anything to change our situation, you know I would."

"As would I," Sandor replied. He sounded infinitely weary. "But there is no remedy for it. It is beyond either of us. Neither my strength, nor your wealth, or all the willpower we can muster, will change the fact that you are alive, and I am dead."

"And," he continued, when she opened her mouth to speak, "it doesn't change how wrong it is that you waste yourself with a dead man instead of building a life with a live one."

Now it was her turn to flinch, feeling as if he could not have hurt her more if he actually had struck her.

"Sandor," she began in a low voice, striving for a state of calm she did not feel, and doubted she might ever feel again. "I am not wasting myself with you. You have given me more happiness and fulfillment than any dozen men could have. Yes, I will have to relinquish my hopes of motherhood, but that is not so much of a sacrifice in comparison. I do it willingly, even eagerly, so that I can be at your side."

His jaw was set in the way men do when they are bracing themselves for an amputation; rigidly, resigned to the agony to come.

But his voice was tender as he said, "I know, and that is why I must do this. For you, because you deserve it. You should have a life filled with children and grandchildren and the kind of joy I cannot give you."

"No," she declared, her hand slashing out to the side in agitation. "I will not agree to it."

"I know," Sandor repeated, and gave her one of his rare smiles, a curve of lips so sweet it would have brought tears to Sansa's eyes, had she not already been crying.

And then he just... faded away. There was a sharp pain in her chest, and a shattering sense of loss. He was gone.

And not just gone from her sight, but gone from her heart. She reached out to him with desperate supplication, but he was only the faintest hint at the far side of a wide ocean, unreachable.

"What have you done?" she cried. "Oh, Sandor, what have you done?"

Her strength waned abruptly and she sank to the floor.

"Don't do this," she whispered, begging him, shameless. "Don't do this. Come back to me. Please come back to me."

But he did not.

Not then, and not hours later, as sunrise began to burn away the dew. Sansa was exhausted from sobbing raggedly all night, her voice hoarse from pleading with him to return. At last, depleted of all stamina, she swooned where she had remained collapsed from the night before.

That was when Sandor reappeared, going to his knees by her side.

"You'll make yourself sick, little bird," he murmured with sorrow, and lifted her into his arms. "This is why I'm going away. You won't let me go, so you'll have to forget me."

Sandor carried Sansa back to the bed. He pulled back the coverlet and arranged her under it, tucking her in tenderly with hands that shook with anguish.

"I can't make your life what it should be. I can only confuse you more, and destroy whatever chance you have left of happiness. You must make your own life amongst the living."

He kissed her with a yearning that would never be fully sated.

"Sansa, listen to me. Listen, little bird."

His voice filled her ears, her mind, her very soul.

"You likely won't remember me, but if you do, it will have been in a dream. You've just been dreaming of a pirate who haunted this place. But you imagined him, Sansa. In the morning and the years after, you'll only remember me as a dream, and it will die... as all dreams must die, at waking."

Sandor kissed her one last time, with exquisite tenderness.

"Goodbye, my little bird."

Sansa awoke the next morning with a sense that she'd forgotten something terribly important, and a faint memory of a nightmare that slipped away the moment she tried to grasp it. As she made her way through her morning toilette with Sally's help, she wracked her brain to recover it, but the matter always danced narrowly out of reach, so close it was maddening. She didn't feel especially rested, and found herself yawning throughout breakfast, to her embarrassment.

Jon and Ygritte, too, seemed sleepy, but by the glances they kept giving each other, she could tell the reason for their lack of rest was not the same as hers. It was clear they were taking advantage of Lucy's nighttime care of the children and exploiting their privacy to the fullest. It seemed likely that another Snow would be making an appearance before the year ended.

Sansa was glad for them, though at the same time, that lingering impression of misery she had been able to glean about the nightmare made her feel lonely, as if she'd had a taste of that deep bond of love but lost it somewhere along the way.

The sensation lingered all that day, and the next. On the third day, feeling preoccupied, she smilingly refused when her brother and goodsister invited her to come with them to fetch the children from the nursery after lunch. Once they finished their meal, Jon and Ygritte went up to the nursery to fetch their offspring from poor Lucy, and the Marquess of Blackhaven escorted Sansa out to the garden for a walk in the sunshine.

"You seem sad the past few days, Your Grace," he commented before they had gone a dozen steps. He was very perceptive, Sansa had already noted. "Has something happened?"

Yes, she wanted to reply, but what? She strained and strained and could not recall a thing. Just that dratted nightmare, where something had fallen away and left her feeling so very alone...

Her automatic reaction, finely honed through over two decades of maintaining a bland facade, was to deflect such a personal question with a neutral assurance that she was fine, but something reckless stirred within her.

Why should she not answer him honestly? What great secret was she keeping? How could it possibly shame her to admit something to a man who had proven he had only her best interests to heart?

"Do you ever wake up and feel like a great part of you is missing?" Sansa therefore asked Blackhaven by way of response as they continued to stroll. "Something you knew had been there, had been important, but now is just... gone? And that you will never get it back? And that you will be forever poorer for its lack?"

He looked circumspect as he leaned on his cane, his free hand coming up to hold his watch fob in a way he tended to do when deep in thought.

"I believe you're describing grief, Your Grace," he said at last. His pleasing face was thoughtful and he kept his eyes downturned on the path as he spoke. She liked how he seemed to ponder every time he spoke, the care he took with his words. It quite reminded her of her father and Jon.

"Do call me Sansa," she told him suddenly. "After this past week, have we not Your Grace'd and Your Excellency'd each other quite enough?"

"Indeed. And I am Willas to you, as well. " He gave her a quick smile before sobering to his topic once more. "Yes, that sounds very much like grief, or at least grief as I understand it. I was very fond of my Grandpapa, and when he passed, I had many such mornings as I recalled I would not see him again.

"Also, when I suffered the fall that left me with this." He motioned with a pale, slender hand toward his leg and cane. "I had loved riding, loved horses. Still do." In fact, he was regarded as one of Westeros' finest minds where care and breeding of horseflesh was concerned. "And it had been my habit to rise early each day and go for a brisk ride round the house and grounds. The day I woke with my leg in a cast, unable to even leave my bed, let alone ride anywhere... and that I would never be able to ride again... that was a hard day."

Willas looked away and blinked rapidly, just once, but it touched Sansa and she gave his arm a pat for lack of anything else she could do. He slanted her a little half-smile but kept his gaze out toward the gleam of the sun over the bay.

"And again when I heard about the direction your marriage to Stormlands had taken," he said quietly, deliberately avoiding meeting her eyes. "When I learned of your mistreatment at his hands, and the neglect of his family, I felt a very deep grief indeed."

Sansa was all astonishment.

"If I had known what had gone on... but Margaery never said a word until his death... I would have come to you, Your G- Sansa. I would have taken you from there. Do you believe me?"

She nodded stupidly, feeling a more than a bit stunned. All that time, she had thought herself alone, and-

"There was little I could do after the fact, of course," Willas continued in a conversational tone that belied the tension of both the subject and his slim frame, scarcely an inch taller than her own, "but when I learned of your goodbrother's identity, and how your sister was trying to legitimize him and get his proper portion from old Duke Robert's estate... well, I'm not proud of it, but I did whatever I could to hamper Her Grace, Lady Cersei, in her fight to keep her children's legitimacy established. There are more than a few appeals court judges now in possession of prime summer homes in Highgarden, for example, and that number happens to match how many voted against the Lannisters in favor of your goodbrother."

The smile he gave her was somehow both mischievous and sheepish. Sansa kept blinking through her shock and thought she probably looked very sheeplike, herself.

"It was a small revenge, in comparison to what had befallen you, but it was all I could manage," he finished. "I hope you can forgive me-"

She shocked him, then, by grasping his hands- making his cane clatter to the gravel path- and gripping then with fervor.

"Forgive you?" Her voice was thick, and it hurt to push it past her throat, but she persevered. "You are one of only two people who ever did anything to help me during that time. You don't know what a gift you've given me."

The tears came, then, and Sansa found herself bowing her head, pressing her forehead to their clasped hands.

She did not weep for long; Willas was transparently horrified and commenced stammering all manner of apologies, offering handkerchiefs and smelling salts and cups of tea. Soon she was bright-eyed once more, having blotted her cheeks and given her nose a discreet honk (into her own handkerchief).

"What a fright I must look!" she said while tucking her hand back in the crook of his elbow and tugging to resume their walk. "Some women look pretty when they cry, but my red eyes clash with my hair, I'm afraid."

"Your Gr- Sansa-" Poor Willas was all at sixes and sevens, at a total loss to understand her, and truly Sansa could barely understand herself. All she knew was that the heaviness that had burdened her since wakening those several days ago had lightened a bit.

"I'm quite well now. Thank you, Willas," she said warmly, with a smile that had him pinkening as he stooped to retrieve his cane. "I'm sorry for falling into such a state. Do you forgive me?"

"I think you know I would forgive you anything, S-Sansa," he replied, and even the stutter couldn't lessen the suaveness of it.

Jon hallooed from behind them, then, and they turned to greet him and Ygritte as they ushered the children along the garden path. Lorra skipped to Sansa's side, taking her hand and chirping a good morning. Not to be outdone, Daeron squirmed down from Ygritte's arms and waddled toward his aunt, arms extended in a wordless demand to be lifted.

She obeyed, of course, and settled his sturdy weight on her hip as she pressed a kiss to his plump cheek. He smelled soapy and warm, and she smiled at the scent, only to find Willas watching her with a soft expression.

He didn't say anything, but when they resumed walking, he was perhaps an inch closer than before, and when he left the next day for Highgarden, it was after she had made him promise to return far sooner than Sevenmas.