DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to George R.R. Martin and his amazing Song of Ice & Fire Series. I claim no ownership to any of this, even the parts I made up :) I'm just having my fun because all seven gods of the faith, the old gods and R'hllor know that he probably won't take SanSan where I want them to go :)

SANSA

Winter is coming.

Family, duty, honor.

What were the Clegane words, then, or did they have words at all? Once Sandor had told her, "A hound will die for you, but never lie to you"...but Sansa didn't think those were anyone's words but his.

He was not lying to her now, she knew - he had meant to steal her away across the sea, apparently to Braavos, but then he'd decided to bring her to her family after all. He would bring her to them and he would leave her with them and suddenly she was not sure which would be the worse of the two scenarios. To be stolen away, initially against her will, but to remain safe with him, to lose themselves in an entirely new life...or to be brought back to those she barely knew anymore and to see him leave her, to never again feel so protected, so wanted...to never again feel his lips on hers or to brush her fingers over his brave scarred face...

Sansa finally lay down on her bedroll and curled up under her cloak, wondering if he would come sleep beside her at all. She tried to stay awake but couldn't, as weak as she was from riding all day, and when she did fall asleep it was heavy and dreamless and she awoke to the sound of baying dogs and the hooves of horses, followed by shouting. She sat up abruptly. "Sandor," she hissed, but she could not see him. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Sansa stumbled toward the spot in the hedge where he had disappeared the previous evening - but he was gone, and through the branches she could see a group of maybe a dozen men. Their backs were turned to her but when one of them called out, "You'll never believe this, we've caught the Lannister dog!" she propelled herself forward, shoving through the hedge, through these strangers, to throw her arms around the drunk, disoriented Sandor.

"Leave him alone!" she cried.

"What's this, then, Hound? With all we hear of you, you don't quite sound like the fatherly type," one of the men said. He was stocky and old, older than Sandor at least, and his weak chin sent a quiver through Sansa.

"I'm his squire," she spat. "What has he done, why are you accosting him?"

"What has he done?" the weak-chinned man asked incredulously. "If you're his squire, you must know quite a bit of what he's done. A Lannister dog, he is, and they're all the same. Raping and burning and killing...this one's for the cages, he is."

Cages? Sansa felt suddenly sick. "You can't take him!"

"Oh yes we can," the man sneered. "And you're coming too." And then they were on her and though she struggled she was still weak and had no weapon. Sandor put up more of a fight, but there were too many of them and they'd caught him unawares. He was still in his cups as well, his eyes glazed and his steps uneven and Sansa inwardly cursed him for a drunken fool. He had promised to protect her, she thought for what seemed like the hundredth time, yet he had passed out from the wine and been sniffed out by his own kind.

One of the uncouth men bound her wrists and set her atop his horse, clambering up behind her, his arms on either side of hers as he took up his reins. If he moves in the wrong direction, just a bit, he'll find out quite quickly that I'm a girl, she fretted, but there was nothing to be done for it. She watched them bind Sandor as well, kept her eyes on him, refused to look away - but he was avoiding her gaze as he'd done most of the previous day. Look at me, she wanted to scream at him. Look at me and tell me that you can fix this! But then the men spun their horses around and spurred them away from the hedgerow and the little river and Sansa watched the weeping willows disappear from view, her heart pounding in her chest to the rhythm of her fear.

SANDOR

He could not have failed the little bird any more miserably than he had. Caught by a pack of some peasant's hounds as he slept off his wine - when he was supposed to be keeping watch, nonetheless! His head was pounding and his body ached but above all he was seething with anger. I will get us out of this mess, he swore to himself, and when I do I'll kill every one of these buggering arses.

For now, though, he'd have to bide his time. The men drove their horses hard and it was still morning when they reached a place that Sandor knew at first sight. Stoney Sept. But why...?

There was a bit of back-and-forth between the stocky, balding leader of their captors and the captain of the gate. "Any food for us today, Huntsman? Maybe a Kingslayer?" Sandor's attention was immediately caught by the mention of Jaime Lannister. Last he'd known Lannister had been a captive of the Tully's at Riverrun...had so much really changed since they'd fled King's Landing?

"No Kingslayer," the stocky man admitted. "But not a completely fruitless hunt, as is." He jerked a thumb in Sandor's direction, but the captain barely gave him a second look before shrugging carelessly and opening the gates to let them pass. The town looked different from what he remembered, but similar as well - the stone holdfast and the hilltop sept were still standing, but most of the other dwellings were mere shells of what they'd once been. At first it seemed that they were the only people in Stoney Sept, but even in his half-drunk state Sandor was more wary than most and soon he noted a handful of bowmen scattered on the roofs and some children peering from behind walls that had half-collapsed into piles of rubble.

They moved into the town square, where a group of iron cages hung near the trout fountain. The only live things in the square just now were the crows, dozens of them, and the smell of the rotting bodies in the cages made Sandor's head swim and his stomach roil. He heard someone gagging and immediately looked to the little bird. She was retching off the side of the horse and the man behind her pushed her to the ground in disgust. Sandor opened his mouth and began to shout, but someone clocked him over the head with a fist and for a moment he saw only stars. When his vision cleared he saw that though Sansa was still on her hands and knees, she had backed as far away from the cages as the men would let her and did not seem to be harmed. The pack of dogs that had sniffed them out was barking and howling and running circles around the cages and some new men appeared, men of Stoney Sept most likely, and pulled a fat dead body from one of the cages. The hounds leapt at it and began tearing it apart, and Sandor's stomach heaved, though whether it was due to that or to the fact that just then he was shoved to the ground, he wasn't sure. His captor was shouting at him, calling him a Lannister bastard and talking about spending his gold, calling it Lannister gold and Sandor wanted to growl, "I won that gold, you arse, earned it in a tourney," but then the men were lifting him and shoving him into the cage and people were throwing dung and stones and one caught him across the temple and he lost consciousness.