A/N: This chapter is dedicated to reader/reviewer magnus374! Thanks for the support and thoughts! Super appreciated, as always.

-C

Gendry washed his face, feeling the delightful cool that came from Northern air. He didn't know why he was being called to the lady's solar, but he wasn't going to look like he'd just come from the forge, even though he had. Even if Lady Clegane didn't mind, he had seen the way some of her advisors and peers looked at him, like the soot on his face was distasteful to them.

"How do I look, Nymeria?" he asked the direwolf. He'd been using her name since learning it. She looked up at him with disinterested eyes and sniffed. Gendry laughed, wiping a bit of water off his cheek. No need to freeze his skin on the walk over. "Well, have a good nap, then. Don't make a mess."

Nymeria sniffed again, resting her head on her paws and closing her eyes once more, not caring to make a mess at all. At least not for now. Gendry would be uneasy when he came back, for sure.

A squire let him in, a bit dazzled, and Gendry found when he entered the solar, that he was not the first to arrive. Sansa was leaning forward, speaking in hushed tones with Tyene Sand.

"It would be nice if it were Arya," Sansa was saying softly. "But we cannot be certain. Jon said he was told that Arya was coming to the Wall, and it turned out to be the Karstark girl. And the Arya sent to marry Ramsay Bolton was actually Jeyne Poole. Look into it, but I won't get my hopes up."

Gendry clenched his fists without realizing, wondering where this supposed Arya Stark was. Could she really be alive somewhere?

"Someone is here," Tyene said softly, turning to see Gendry and smiling an amused smile. "Ah, the blacksmith. I shall leave you to your…conversation."

Sansa stood and kissed the woman's cheek before Tyene moved swiftly but smoothly from the room. Sansa smiled and gestured for Gendry to come closer.

"Please, come, sit. Would you care for some wine?"

Gendry nodded, coming forward, taking the seat she gestured to, the one Tyene Sand had just occupied.

"Your sister may be alive," he said softly. "You must be pleased."

"I am…cautiously optimistic," Sansa said, her lips twitching slightly as she poured him a glass of wine. "I have experienced plenty of disappointment in the time since I left Winterfell. Isn't it funny, how as a child disappointment feels so heavy, and then you experience true pain and that disappointment of childhood seems so pointless."

Gendry nodded again, thanking her as he took the wine she passed to him. He took a quick drink right away for politeness, but then watched her for a moment, still wondering why she had called him here. There didn't seem to be much for them to say to each other, and she was a High Lady. He was just a blacksmith.

"I find myself missing someone to talk at," Sansa said with a sweet smile. "Not talk to, but talk at. I have a very quiet husband, and my father was a very quiet man, and my brother Jon was very quiet. I always had friends who would giggle with me, but it wasn't until Sandor rode south that I realized how much I've always needed someone to talk at."

"And you want to talk at me," Gendry said, smiling, almost relieved that it wasn't something serious. He had been half worried she would say there wasn't enough work for him to stay.

"If you wouldn't mind," she said, appearing almost sheepish. "You see, you seem the type of man who would be tolerant of someone talking at him, and I thought that might make the proposal a little less daunting than simply selecting a subject I trust and talking at them. Asking rather than ordering, you know."

Gendry nodded. She had only been a High Lady for a short period of time. She wasn't used to ordering people around for her personal needs in the same way as she had as a child.

Then again, as far as Gendry was concerned, she was still a child. It wasn't because she was younger than him, but something about how small her eyes sometimes looked when he was alone with her, like she was tired of pretending. He realized it must be a great strain to do her job, and that instead of doing it when her parents died natural deaths, she had to take on the task with very little training, and in the middle of a war.

"You may talk at me whenever you like," he said, bowing his head slightly in reverence. Then he picked up his wine again.

For two hours, she told him stories from her childhood. Mainly, they were stories about her brothers, but sometimes she would mention her sister, Arya, and Gendry would listen with especial care. He told himself that it wasn't a selfish care. Lady Sansa was clearly the most troubled with Arya's possibility of being alive. After all, everyone knew her eldest brother was dead, and everyone knew Jon Snow was alive. No mystery there. But with Arya Stark, there could only be hope or the giving up of hope.

Gendry wanted to encourage Lady Sansa, to tell her that if anyone could survive, it was her sister. But it felt contrived to say it, and Gendry did not want to stretch this newfound trust.

When Lady Sansa tired of speaking at him, he went back to his own home, a small workshop where he also had a room to sleep and eat in. He looked around his room, thinking of its possibilities.

As time went on, if the war went well enough for the North, he could build a life here. He could earn a respectable living, take an apprentice, maybe even take a wife if he met a woman who put his mind to it. It would be simple enough to expand on the room, to make new rooms, to build a proper house attached to his smithy.

But one day at a time, he reminded himself, pulling off his tunic and adjusting the furs on his bed. There were many conditions attached to such a future, none of which were certain. All Gendry could do was follow the bidding of his masters. If someday that meant his fortunes would turn poor, there was little he could do about that now. His conscience told him that Lady Sansa was the person he needed to follow, and so he would follow her, just as his conscience told him he needed to give her mother peace.

He stoked the fire in his little room and watched the flames flicker merrily, as though unaware of the flurry outside, the seemingly unending snow since coming North. Winter was coming, several people had told him since he arrived. They seemed not to be bothered by the flurries, the snow. They knew how to dress, how to walk, how to cover their noses to keep their moustaches from collecting icicles. From the lords to the children, they all understood this weather.

Gendry did not flinch when Nymeria came and curled up by his feet. He ran his fingers through her thick fur. She spent her time wandering between his forge and the side of Lady Sansa, seeming to know when the Lady was awake and when she was asleep. Sometimes he would wake and Nymeria would already be gone. Other mornings, she would be watching him, waiting for him to wake up and begin his day's work.

"She probably doesn't need you keeping her feet warm," he said to the wolf, whose eyes watched him in the darkness. "She's a Stark. Ice in her veins and all that."

He closed his eyes, struggling to get comfortable in the cold. He had thought several times about sleeping with his tunic on, but that only made his discomfort different, and worse.

Sansa Clegane did not make Gendry think of a Stark, not in any way that he had ever understood a Stark. She was not stoic, she was not cool, and she was certainly not a hard woman. He imagined that if he were to cross her, he might see those sides of her, but the girl who talked at him that evening seemed nothing like a Stark. Like a chirping bird, perhaps, or a cat looking for attention, but nothing like the direwolf at his feet.

Gendry could see clearly the story she told from her childhood of going with her dearest friend and sneaking to take lemon cakes from the kitchen. Her father had discovered them greedily stuffing their faces, and she told him how he looked at her not with anger, but with disappointment that cut like a knife to her heart. She had cried herself to sleep that night, still wishing he had yelled instead of speaking softly, sadly, about what she had done.

He could picture a child covered with yellow cake crumbs, as clearly as he could picture the snow outside.

/-/

Sandor did not look up when the door to his rooms opened. He poured himself another glass of wine and said, "Punctual as ever, Lord Stannis."

If it rankled at all that Sandor was not referring to him as a king, Stannis hid it well. After all, he had relinquished his claims and agreed to support the Dragons, as Sansa had done, as Doran had done.

Stannis did not wait to be asked, but instead sat beside Sandor, stretching out his legs.

"Your wife is young," Stannis said, "but she learned a thing or two from watching the Lannisters."

Sandor felt the corner of his lips curling in wry amusement. If Stannis thought he was going to sew dissent, or perhaps cause any problems between them, he was a fool.

"She learned to survive," Sandor said, setting down his glass, now half-empty. "I imagine if you'd had her childhood, you would have learned the same. They're skills that might have kept her father alive. Honor can't serve a corpse."

The two men sat in silence as Sandor allowed Stannis to digest these words. He finished and refilled his glass, enjoying having company he didn't have to share his wine with. That was the beauty of spiritual men. If they had wine at all, they had a glass only.

"Lady Sansa has no memory of the Dragons," Stannis finally said. "But you do."

"Aye."

"People did not fight my brother's war for Lyanna, but because of the Mad King. The uncertainty, the terror. They say the madness was inborn."

"They say a lot of things," Sandor said, lips twitching as he lifted his goblet to his lips.

Stannis seemed truly troubled by this thought that the madness could be inborn, and as far as Sandor was concerned, it was a potential problem. He could recall, as could Stannis, what it cost to rid themselves of the first Mad King, but to have to do it over again when Westeros was already in shambles, and apparently facing a great threat from beyond the Wall….

"In the end," Sandor said, setting down his glass, but not refilling it, "it comes down to unity. The strength of your brother's assault was the unification of Westeros against the Dragons." He stretched his own legs, turning to a map of the Twins. "Let the people have their Dragons back. Should they decide they don't want them after all, at least they're likely to have some unified thinking. But in spite of all the fracturing, I think the one thing we can all agree is that we'd rather try another Dragon than have the likes of Cersei Lannister running Westeros."

Stannis hummed his agreement, shifting his chair to have a better angle for looking at the map. The two men looked at the region in silence. Neither was native to the area, nor did they know with great certainty the particulars that Sansa's parents would have, of families and defenses.

"There has been a great hole in the Riverlands since the Tullys suffered their fate," Stannis finally said. "From what I have heard, the Lannisters have attempted to fill it, essentially, with the highest bidder."

"Highest bidder," Sandor repeated in a kind of grumble. "Why do I get the feeling that means Littlefucker?"

Stannis hummed again, disapproving, although whether more of Sandor's word choice or of Petyr Baelish himself, it was likely even Stannis wasn't sure.

"That isn't going to be conducive to our goals," Sandor said, frowning as he pondered another glass of wine. "But I have a feeling that you have a suggestion to make."

Stannis closed tired eyes, nodded, and said, "I have given it some thought. There is one sure way I know to lure the highest bidder."

"Outbidding?" Sandor said, smirking. "He doesn't need the gold, Lord Stannis. I'm not so sure we have it even if he wanted it."

"True," Stannis said, opening his eyes and giving Sandor a stern look. "Very true. But there are things to be offered other than gold. There is little that Littlefinger wants, but I believe we can put our heads together and find…whatever it is. You are a crafty man. It will come down to finding something he wants enough that we could truly control him."

Sandor grunted, but he wondered if Stannis wasn't being a bit optimistic. Baelish found ways to obtain what he wanted through means that were palatable to him, and if it wasn't palatable to him to have a Dragon on the Iron Throne, he had a feeling it wouldn't be possible to buy him. And with a man who was so untrustworthy, it was difficult to trust that he was even truly on your side or just pretending. Recalling the way Baelish had looked at Sansa while they were in King's Landing, as well, Sandor wasn't about to suppose the man could be trusted around Sandor's wife, in the least, but sometimes deals with the devil were necessary. If Sandor had learned anything from the Lannisters, it was that unsavory fact.

"The question is," Sandor said softly, "how do we present the idea to Lady Sansa?"

"Your wife will welcome any and all allies if she is clever," Stannis said, eyes narrowing. "And if she has not learned that particular thing about fighting losing battles, she had best learn it quickly or we are all doomed."

Of course, Sandor could have spoken in defense of his wife, but he had a feeling Stannis was trying to goad him into speaking intently about Sansa's abilities in maneuvering. Sandor knew enough to keep his mouth shut on his wife's strengths and weaknesses, no matter how much they assumed they could trust Stannis. Nothing could truly be assumed, nothing at all except that Sansa loved him. Everything else was standing on sand.

As soon as he could, Sandor took his leave from Stannis and went to his bed, setting the candle that lit his room off to the side as he pulled off his tunic and shivered. The cold was unpleasant on his skin, but he was growing used to the sensation. The positive thing about being a little cold while sleeping was that he was less likely to sleep through something important. He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply and watched the flame on the candle with tired consideration. He wondered what Sansa was doing and imagined her in their bed at Winterfell, watching a flame and thinking of him.

Perhaps he should not have let his mind wander, but he closed his eyes and ignored the snarky voice in the back of his head telling him to stay in the moment. He imagined his wife's body, imagined running his fingers along every part of her body and pressing hungry kisses to her skin as he touched her. He imagined the little sounds she would make, the breathless panting and euphoric gasps and moans that made him hard with incredible speed. He could almost feel her soft, smooth skin on his hands.

Sandor could almost taste her skin, her lips. It mingled with the wine he'd drank and tingled on his tongue. If he could fly like a Dragon and land with his Little Bird at Winterfell, and not lose any time in being where she needed him to be. He would lap at her fingers, her lips, her sweet spot between her thighs like a good dog, and still serve her faithfully at the Neck.

He moaned softly and thought of her neck, letting his mind trace the curve of her soft skin, that sweet column of her throat. Sandor would trace his fingers along Sansa's skin as she lowered herself to put him in her mouth. Oh, he loved it when she did that. As much as he tried, as easily as he could imagine her, he could not accurately imagine the heat and pressure and moisture of her perfect, sweet mouth around him. He could come close, but it would never be as good as truly feeling her.

Accepting this, Sandor did not grow frustrated. He allowed himself to drift blissfully into a kind of trance state between waking and sleeping where he could feel her more fully and yet still know that he was alone in his bed.

The moon shone over the snow outside, but the only light on Sandor's face was a tiny flicker from the candle, and he made no notice as the wind gently blew it out, snuffing him into total darkness. In his mind's eye, there was a small fire and moonlight to illuminate the face of his beautiful wife as she whispered his name on tired, sated lips. Her beautiful Tully blue eyes glowed with an exhausted satisfaction, and she did not have to say out loud that she loved him. Somehow, some way, it was true.

A/N: *Cough* So. My degree is done? I'm working on getting a job? And while I do that, I'm hoping to get some work rolling again.

While you're waiting for more chapters of this story, if you're a Harry Potter fan, I update Unknowns weekly. So that could tide you over?

Review Prompt: What are your biggest hopes for this story (apart from more frequent updates…)

-C