Shotgun

Sansa loves the mountains. Here it's beautiful and quiet and everyone knows everybody else. That's good and bad, depending… Right now it would be bad.

She came here for her own safety, and to spare her family; but she doesn't really want to be alone.

Please, you know this place. Please come, I need you; we need you.

She could have run to town instead; but Sansa had been to town before. She knew what folks there thought of people from the mountains: that they're backward, ignorant and always fighting. Some still called them hillbillies. They thought all the girls were loose. Sansa stayed out of trouble and did well in school but she also knew the woods and the streams and the animals and had learned to hunt and fish from her father; they had all needed to learn just to survive. With the mines shut down there was less work and less money and times were hard.

The Stark family had got out of pits a long way back and had become lawmen; Uncle Benjen was a prison guard and her father had even been sheriff of Winter county until he was shot one night during a robbery. They'd never caught those who had done it; though a bunch of Lannisters from Casterly county on the other side of the hollow had been promoted up the ladder once he was gone, and now they seemed to own pretty near all the businesses that remained in these parts. Sansa had even had a job after school and on weekends as a cashier at the mini-mart they owned but that boy Joffrey kept saying he'd fire her or report her for stealing if she didn't lay with him. Joff was a townie working for his grandfather so he looked down his nose at county folk. So she had to up and quit though she needed the money for her family and had even wanted to save for college someday. Sandor, who worked the gas pumps outside, had warned her: she was too pretty and Joff'd be trouble for her, but she had wanted the job. She remembered how his eyes had softened when he called her pretty, even though his words were harsh.

He was older and big and strong and had a viciously scarred face that some said he got in the mines and others said he got in the service; but Sansa knew the truth of it because he had told her one night that his own brother had done it. He'd cut and burned his younger brother one night after school because the teacher had moved Sandor up to a grade where his brother was years behind. Sandor had been hurt so bad that he could not finish out the year and by the time he went back to school Gregor was old enough to drop out. In time Sandor also dropped out: he couldn't stand the way folks looked at him. He didn't know which he hated worse: judgement or pity.

Sansa understood why he never told anyone: in these parts, family business, no matter how bad, stayed in the family. You didn't complain or feel sorry for yourself because near everyone had it bad. She wasn't sure why he did tell her that night as they walked away from the fairground after he won the shooting contest. She had wanted pointers on shooting so she could fell a buck that year and he'd responded to her flattery with scorn and the story of why he'd needed to learn to shoot and carry a gun, to protect himself form his own brother. Maybe she should have walked away then and not asked for trouble. How could she have known that she would love him? How could she have known that it would be Sandor to get her in trouble?

Girls who got in trouble were ruined, just like her Aunt Lyanna had been. Folks whispered it'd been a mercy she'd died birthing Jon but Sansa knew her father had been hurt by the talk. He'd kept Jon with the family instead of sending him away like other folks did and he'd been treated mean. Still, he was a Stark to her and kinfolk mattered in these parts. But now Sansa had left her kin, so as to spare them and maybe even to spare herself. Folks who have little set a store by their good name, and losing it brought dishonor on their family who might go all out to defend it. Feuds had started and lasted generations for less. Sansa didn't want her brother Robb or her cousin Jon to call Sandor out: they were both good with a rifle but Sandor carried a handgun and could shoot better than any man in four counties. He'd proved that at the fair.

She rubbed her swelling belly under the oversized, hand-me-own sweater she wore.

"Your daddy'll come for us," she whispered tearfully. "I just know he will."

She'd come by hitchhiking lifts from strangers, telling them she was going to surprise her husband who was returning from serving overseas. It got her respect and kept her safe as far as Flint county where her great-grandmother's kin still kept a cabin for hunting. She had been here for days but she knew he would come: they had come here together for their first time, her first time at least. He would know to look for her here. She prayed every night he would come, but by the end of the week she was trying not to cry. Sansa did not want to go live in town and take welfare like so many other mountain girls: she'd rather be poor with her people than poor in someplace where no one knew her or cared. She was lying on the mattress early the next morning when she heard footsteps on the porch outside.

"Sandor," she whispered to herself as her heart filled and she scrambled to her feet. The door opened before she reached it and he stood there with a bunch of mountain wildflowers in his hand.

"Sandor!" She beamed at him and then put her hands on her hips and pouted. "What took you so long?"

"Man needs to work to provide for his family, don't he? Been to Hearth county and back; got work with the Umber mills."

"Really, Sandor?"

"Come get in the truck now; it's parked up the road. We're going to town."

"Town? Why?" Sansa asked in dismay. "Why should we go to town?"

"To get a marriage license, little bird: if you're gonna have my child, you're gonna have my name."