AN – Thank you everyone for the beautiful reviews, but especially to Mary of AO3 (I'm assuming you're the same person?) and Mari Wollsch of , who reviewed on both Kings and AtU. Drunk me waxed poet about everyone's reviews for an actual hour on Australia Day, and now all my work mates think that all my readers are great. My husband, however, has had to put up with my fangirling through various states of sobriety and lack there-of, so your names are kind of mud atm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One of the shepherds of Winterfell had once told Arya that he always knew how to find home again because of the moss that grew on the tree trunks. She had spotted the same moss growing in the thickets surrounding Harrenhal. Moss grew thickest on the North side of trees, so Arya had been marching herself and the boys in that same direction. Sansa and her mysterious "we" were behind them, and Robb and Mother were ahead of them, expecting them, and Arya couldn't wait. Even Gendry's complaining (a ploy to distract her from last night's hysterics) wasn't going to deter her good mood.

Unfortunately, it also left them distracted. They didn't see the company of men, and though they heard the singing – The Reynes of Castamere, Sansa had been practicing it on the trip to Kings Landing, before Lady died – the warning didn't come until too late. They couldn't hide from the company, though they tried, and couldn't threaten them either, despite Arya's best efforts. When Thoros of Myr introduced himself, Arya had a moment of recollection of seeing the red man talking to her father at the Hand's Tourney, and hoped desperately that she would not be recognised. Sansa was close, she knew it – Sorrow had been flying back and forth with scraps of paper between the sisters all morning – and Arya already had two useless people depending on her waterdancing. Thoros was some great warrior from across the sea, and even Arya Stark could only do so much.

"Who do you fight for?"

"The Brotherhood without Banners. Now come along – I want to know how two boys and a very dangerous girl escaped Harrenhal."

"I'm not going with them!" Hot Pie hissed. "The Brotherhood? That's who the Mountain and all them was looking for. They'll bring us back and put rats in us!"

"You've nothing to fear from us, son." Thoros interrupted. "The Lords of Westeros want to burn the countryside. We're trying to save it. Now come on. We'll talk some more over brown bread and stew. And then you can go on your way."

Hot Pie began stepping backwards, and Gendry was easing off too. On the edge of her hearing, Arya thought she caught a crow's caw.

Anguy, the archer, readied his long bow, and fired straight up in to the sky. "Here's the thing, fat boy. When I'm done talking, that arrow is fallin' down on your fat head. So I advise you move, because I'm done talking."

"Sorrow look out!" Arya screamed. A flurry of black feathers heralded the raven, who collided with Hot Pie's shoulder and pushed him closer to Arya, and out of the way of the arrow. Hissing, Sorrow then flew in to Anguy's face.

"Geddit off of me!" Snarled the archer, flailing. Sorrow flew out of the way, shat on Anguy's face, and finally settled on Arya's shoulder. Holding him steady with her right hand, Arya flourished the stolen sword with her left.

"Sansa?" She breathed. Sorrow tweaked her ear affectionately, and slipped a piece of paper down the back of her collar.

"The fuck is that bird?!" Anguy shouted, swiping mess from his eyes.

"His name is Sorrow." Arya answered evenly. "He's with me."

"A dangerous girl with a dangerous pet!" Thoros crowed. "And how did you come to have such a creature?"

"Sorrow found me." Arya said honestly. "He brings me scraps sometimes."

"A useful pet indeed! Well then, my youthful new friends, let us away!"

"Arya's been captured!" Sansa cries.

Clegane had not believed her at first when she had shot awake at dawn, crowing about her most successful warging yet, of the little sister who was just ahead of them. They had been riding to catch up with Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie since first light, stopping often for Sansa to check for Sorrow's scratch marks and to get their bearings. With their constant stops, Sansa had taken to shooting from the saddle, and grabbing the arrows on the way past. As she had reached to grab for her latest shot, Sansa had felt Sorrow in the back of her mind tug. Suddenly she was with the raven, who was watching her little sister from a distance as a company of men lead by the Red Priest, Thoros of Myr, surrounded the three travellers. Sansa had ever been the most proper of her siblings, but even she could be a wolf when her family needed it, and so had sicked Sorrow on an archer who was threatening her sister.

Sansa told the Hound all of this, even how at the end she had made Sorrow make waste on the archer's face. Sandor Clegane had barked a laugh, and then asked her to keep track of where Arya was being taken. This worked for Sansa, as that was what she wanted to do anyway. Sansa also found that the more she slipped in to Sorrow, the easier it was becoming.

"I have to make water!" Arya was being deliberately difficult on the Brotherhood.

"I keep telling you, we ain't stopping!" The archer snapped.

"But it's my moontime!" Arya whispered, high pitched and embarrassed. "I need to stop!"

The men had all blanched, and Arya had been allowed to slip away with only Sorrow for company.

Aaaaaaryaaaaa! Sansa called quietly, tugging on a lock of sawn-off hair.

"I'm not really on my moonblood," Arya answered obligingly, tugging at her collar to retrieve Sansa's last note. "Men just don't like to talk about it, so it makes a good cover."

Aah, aah, aah! Sansa laughed with her sister, before dropping to the ground and sketching a heart out of loose leaves. She waited for Arya to finish the note – a list of foods Sansa wanted to eat once they reached Riverrun – before cawing and tapping at her sketch.

Arya's lips wobbled a little, before she whispered, "I love you too. We've started heading westwards a little, but we're still on the road. Be careful, ok?"

Sansa cawed her agreement, and stepped back again.

"There should be an old wall ahead of us," Sansa told Clegane, ruffling her shoulders much as Sorrow would. "We pass through it to the other side, and follow the westwards track. There's Thoros and the archer, and another four men-at-arms besides."

"Good work, girl," Clegane growled, looking at her cautiously. "It's getting easier for you, isn't it?"

"Aye," Sansa nodded, grabbing her arrow and shooting for another tree some ten metres ahead. She hit exactly where she had aimed, and felt a smile bloom fierce and proud across her face. "The more I do it, the more it feels like – like putting on a pair of shoes! If they're a pair that weren't made especially for you, they take some growing in, and the more you wear them, the easier it is to pull them on."

"You had another messenger call while you were with your sister," He says simply, pointing upwards. This raven Sansa actually recognises – it's the one she sent to Robb originally.

Lady,

They said you were both with the lions. You have sent letters before, sweet sister, that were not your own. I do not know how to trust this letter, either.

I hope it to be true.

It remained unsigned but for a sketched Direwolf.

Sansa growled at this herself, and dug through her saddlebags for the stick of charcoal she had been using to write Arya.

Grey Wind.

Nymeria escaped Harrenhal, captured by the Brotherhood without Banners – they do not yet know her. Moving to rescue her. It is wise to be cautious, but don't be a shift, otherwise I will have Sorrow and Mirth make another mess on you!

Lady

"What's got you scowling?" Clegane asks curiously.

"My sister does not believe me, my brother does not believe me," Sansa hissed. She glared at the bird, and said, "Please let me in."

Warging this raven was different to warging Sorrow. The female felt far more mischievous to Sansa's other senses, and far more open to suggestions from a human. Good, Sansa thought. She looked through the raven's eyes to see that her own had gone white and rolled to the back of her head. Clegane watched her worriedly. Mirth, Sansa whispered to her new bird. Could you please take this letter back to my brother? Conjuring a picture of Robb in their shared mindscape, Sansa asked, And when you see him, I want you to make waste on his face.

Ravens don't understand the term make waste, but they do understand the imagery of it. Mirth seemed thrilled at the idea, and was more than happy to fly over to Mercy. Sansa stepped back from the bird and in to her own body, and attached the scroll to the raven's foot.

"Fly swiftly, and safely." Sansa instructed. Mirth cawed at her, and took off.

"What did you do, girl?" Clegane asked.

"I told Mirth where to make her next mess," Sansa hissed back, turning Mercy towards her last shot, and then onwards.

"You used your Northern magick to shit on your King brother?!" He exclaimed, before howling with laughter. When he calmed down, he asked, "Mirth?"

"One is for sorrow, two is for mirth; three is a wedding, four is a birth; five is for laughing, six is for crying; seven for sickness, eight for dying; nine is for love, ten is a kiss; eleven's a secret, and twelve grants a wish." Sansa recited.

"You gonna collect them all?" Clegane asks, still in good humour.

"Mayhaps. We'll concentrate on finding Arya for now. Let's go – this way."

Arya had mostly behaved for the Brotherhood the whole of their march to a wayside inn, although she had begged another "break" due to her "moonblood" just before they reached the building. She had sent directions off with Sorrow, and hoped that her sister wasn't too much further off.

The Brotherhood had settled in to the inn well enough, though that Anguy bloke had taken a small company of men and gone off to hunt for the inn as recompense, or something. Gendry, Hot Pie and then Arya had slid in to a bench opposite Thoros and another two men, and had been given their promised bread and stew. Thoros was mourning the size of his alehorn, and trying to have the three of them partake as well. He did not seem fond of Arya's refusal, but did not force her to drink as another might have.

"Now, how did three children – "

"We're not children," She corrected quickly. After what they had seen at Harrenhal, and all that they had done since leaving Kings Landing, not a one of them could be called that, no matter how old Thoros was.

Without skipping a beat, the ginger continued as though she had not interrupted him. "How did three young persons such as yourselves, untrained in the art of war, escape from Harrenhal?"

She looks to the boys to make sure they are paying attention to the half-truths she is going to spin, and then speaks. "Gendry's a smith. He was apprentice in the armoury."

"A smith, ey? Where'd you train?"

Gendry is not as good at lying as Arya, and so he answers honestly. "Kings Landing. Tobho Mott's shop."

"That criminal?" Thoros scoffs. Arya is looking though, and she can see something in his eyes – he is baiting Gendry, to see if what they say is true. "He charges twice as much as every armourer in the city!"

"That's because he's twice as good." Even now, Gendry is proud of his former Master, and the old man's work.

"Aha! A smith and a salesman."

With that fact verified, Arya continues her tale. "Gendry stole us weapons."

"Aah. Fought your way out of Harrenhal I see." Thoros is humouring her, she knows. He's baiting, and wants a reaction – Sansa isn't far away. She has backup, if she needs it.

"He knows how to use a sword," Arya tells them coldly, proudly – she had been training the boys around the campfire at night, teaching them all Syrio had once taught her. "And so do I."

The men laugh, and something ugly rears its head inside of Arya. "My brothers taught me," another half-truth, for Robb and Jon had often shown her how to swing a sword at play as children, and Bran and baby Rickon had used her to help practice too. But this just makes the men laugh more, and that prickly, helpless rage is filling her up near to bursting, and Arya stands and draws her sword in challenge. Thoros is drunk and unarmed, and she has her stolen sword beneath his chin.

He moves his arm as though to brush her sword away with his alehorn, but he stands and draws his sword in a spectacular display of speed instead, to raucous laughter. In one move he has her retreating and disarmed, and in another he is showing off with a flowery spin and a flourishing twirl of his sword. If she weren't so mad, she'd be impressed. Behind her there is the thundering hooves of approaching horses, which Thoros ignores to offer a mock-toast to her brothers.

Perhaps he shouldn't have ignored them. A dappled grey mare digs its heels in and skidds to a stop in front of the door – where Sorrow has been watching for who-knows-how-long – and a rider in a long grey cloak slips to the ground, bow drawn back and fury flashing in bright blue eyes.

It was a furious Sansa in the doorway.

"Get away from my sister!" Sansa snarls, as wild in her fury as any of her siblings or their direwolves. "Sorrow!" The raven puffs up impressively, and darts from the doorway to Arya's shoulders.

"Sansa?!" Arya chokes out, bug eyes fixed on the drawn bow in her big sister's hand.

"So the dangerous girl has a dangerous sister?" An unkept ginger man in red mail questions. He sounds drunk already, and it isn't even noon yet.

"Thoros of Myr," Sansa says, an acknowledgement to the man in front of her, a warning for the man behind her. She hadn't given Sandor any warning before she was kicking Mercy into a gallop – she had seen her sister held at sword point through Sorrow's eyes, and had been overcome with such rage that she hadn't thought, only acted. "Let them go."

"I'm usually rather good at remembering pretty girls," the Red Priest slurs, "But I'm afraid I just can't place you, though I'm sure it would have been a very memorable night for you." There is a round of laughter from the men in the inn, and then Sansa can feel Sandor's presence at her shoulder, large and menacing.

Sansa gives the priest an ice-edged smile, fury still licking through her veins. "It was. I had never seen so great a ball as that thrown for the Hand's Turney. And I had been crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty, which was something straight out of the songs for me. I thought it was magnificent."

Gingers are naturally pale, Sansa knows, and yet she can see the moment Thoros figures out who she is, for all the blood in his flushed face drains away.

"Sansa Stark," He whispers. His eyes cut to Arya, and blow even wider. "The missing princess!"

"We're not so missing anymore," Sansa tells him primly. "Our brother, his grace, is expecting us. My shield has graciously agreed to escort us to Riverrun, and so your custody of my sister is no longer necessary. Gendry, Hot Pie, come along." The two boys flinch at her voice, and scramble to obey. Arya is still frozen.

"Now hold on!" Thoros begins, but Sansa speaks over him at Sorrow's call.

"Sandor, there's a party of eight led by that archer coming up behind us. Sorrow, with him please. Thank you for your hospitality, my lord, but I'm afraid we must leave. Arya, come on." She sketched a half curtsey without ever dropping her bow or releasing the draw even a little bit, and waits until Arya and her boys are out the door before she retreats herself, kicking the inn door shut before wheeling around to check what sort of a state the outside is in.

Sorrow's warning had come early, so they have seconds before the archer's party arrives. "Arya, boys, you can take Mercy until we find another horse," She tells them, moving quickly to Stranger. "Sandor?" He mounts first, and then tugs Sansa up behind him so that they can fight together without encumbering the other.

Sorrow calls again, but the shorter boy, Hot Pie, is struggling to pull himself up into the saddle. Sansa stretches out her senses, feels the horses of the Brotherhood in the stables behind the inn, and thinks very hard on how to open the stalls.

"Bird," Sandor growls warningly, spinning Stranger with his knees and holding her slumped body with his left hand.

"What have you done to her?!" Arya demands shrilly.

"Little Bird, wake up!" Sandor snarls, pulling his sword free.

There is a shout from the approaching party, but with a mental twang, the horses all do as she bid. Escaping their pens, she calls them to her.

"NOW!"

Perhaps a dozen beasts gallop around the side of the building, swinging around Mercy and Stranger and colliding with the approaching party. Sansa tugs at a dun-coloured gelding, and sends him to Arya. "Get on," She tells her sister quickly, spinning back to face the inn and redrawing her bow. "Boys, how fast can you handle?"

"We'll make do, princess," Gendry says grimly. "Set the pace."

With the three children finally atop Mercy and the gelding, Sandor taps his heels to Stranger's withers, and they're off. Sansa releases an arrow in the inn door and swings her bow over her shoulders, one end by her right ear and the other hanging by her left thigh. Like the arrow, their horses are off, and the Brotherhood Without Banners are left behind in a cloud of dust.

They've left the Kingsroad and travelled westwards. Sansa thinks that Sandor plans to slip them on to the Riverroad, and use that to cross the Trident, and from what she remembers of her geography lessons with Maester Luwin, she finds this a sound plan. Their only obstacle, it seems, will be Arya.

They haven't been travelling as long as Sansa knows Sandor would have preferred when the sheer number of ravens following them forces them off of the track and in to the woods themselves.

"This is starting to get ridiculous," He grumbles, helping her swing down from Stranger.

"This is useful," Sansa corrects cheerfully, looking at the half-dozen birds surrounding them. "Look, three of these are Westerland houses!"

"Why are you with him?" Arya demands from atop the gelding. Alone of her companions, Arya is the only one to still hold her sword. The boys had both dropped theirs to better hold on to Mercy – Hot Pie's had been lost almost immediately, and Gendry's only a few minutes later when Mercy had had to jump a fallen log – and, even more impressive, was that Arya somehow managing to keep her live blade steady enough that she hadn't accidentally cut the gelding.

"Sandor rescued me from Kings Landing," Sansa answers honestly, moving to Mercy's saddlebags to grab her inkset, quill and dagger. "How did you get away?"

"… Yoren from the Nights Watch took me. These two were meant for the Wall, too. The Goldcloaks killed Yoren, and were looking for Gendry. We were captured, and sent to Harrenhal where his," she jabbed viciously at Sandor, "brother and men were stationed. They were looking for the Brotherhood, and were torturing people with rats to try and find them."

"I have nothing to do with Gregor's crimes, girl," Sandor spat at her.

"Then what about your own?" Arya demanded. "What about my friend Mycah? He was the butcher's son, he was twelve years old and you ran him down and cut him up like a stuck pig!"

"Aye," Sandor said, watching Arya oddly. Sansa glanced up at him past her first letter – another marriage betrothal, could the Westermen do nothing without Lord Tywin's leave?! – and saw that strange look on his face once again. "He was a squealer."

"Sandor," Sansa rebuked softly, refolding that first letter and giving it back to the female who had originally born it. "Thank you, off with you."

"She'll need to learn what the world's like eventually," Sandor grunted. "Can't live a song all the time – how many Starks they got to behead before that gets through your heads?"

"Don't be mean," Sansa scolds, opening the second letter – the Crag, writing to say that the Young Wolf had been to them and, despite the best efforts of the Lady Sybil, the King in the North had not been tempted by the wiles of either herself or her daughters, and had instead taken up with a healer from Essos. "Oh, Robb's married, Arya! Sandor, my sister has never once enjoyed a song that didn't tell of glorious battles, leastaways one about romance. And she has a right to be upset that you killed her friend, even if she doesn't seem to care that it was on Joffrey's orders."

Arya seemed to be visibly struggling on which point to follow first, before finally asking, "Who'd he marry? That Frey girl he promised?"

"No – and this makes that first letter make so much sense! No, he's married a foreign girl, a healer. She must be something, to make Robb forsake his word, though."

"He didn't want bastards," Arya says simply. "He didn't like how Jon was treated, and didn't want any child of his to be treated the same."

Sansa flushes pink at that statement, at the knowledge of what that meant, before coughing and putting the second letter away. "Well! Hopefully that means we shall soon have nieces and nephews to spoil!"

"That would be what you concentrated on," Arya huffs crankily.

"'Scuse me, princess," Gendry offers timidly. "But, what are you doing?"

Sansa smiles at him prettily. "Sansa is fine, thank you, Gendry. You too, Hot Pie. I'm trying to make it so that my worth to Robb is greater as a person than as a bargaining chip. I'm currently acting as his Mistress of Whispers – I've warged all these ravens to me, so that I might see the correspondence before anyone else does. I've already collected quite a bit of information for him, so I hope that this will do."

"What're you doing sending it back then?" Hot Pie questions.

"So that the nobles aren't suspicious," Sansa says cheerfully. "This way th – Sandor!"

The third letter was about him, orders from Lord Kevan Lannister to the Mountain That Rides to bring his brother – the craven who had run from the Blackwater with the King's own betrothed – in for justice. Sansa held it out to her shield, eyes wide with worry. The large man took the letter, and gave a sad sounding laugh. "Took them long enough. Well, this is all the prompting he'll need. Best get you both to your brother soonish, then, else you won't have any protection at all bar for your birds."

"Sandor," Sansa begins.

"Never you mind, Bird. You read those last three letters, and then we'll keep on till the Trident."

"But Sandor –!"

"Bird, just keep at it!"

Sansa felt her lips wobble, the tell-tale burn at the back of her eyes. "Arya?" She called back to her wayward little sister. "Do you remember Maester Luwin's trick for the wax?"

"Aye?"

"Could you finish this one and give it back to that raven, please? I just – I need a moment, I'll be right back."

She tells herself that she just needs to make water and change her padding, and she'll be fine – but Sansa was in Kings Landing long enough to pick out lies. She's no Hound to sniff them out, but she is a Wolf, and, she'd like to think, a wily one yet.

She takes what time she has recovering her composure, and tries not to think that her shield's – her friend's – brother has just been given the go-ahead to become a kinkiller.

"Arya?" She asks once she returned.

"I've done it," Her sister replies petulantly. "What took you so long?"

That fury she had felt earlier – that trickle of wolfsblood – is still tickling the back of her mind, and suddenly she wishes to shock her little sister. With another sharp-edged smile, she answers. "Just because you were lying earlier, does not mean that I am."

Arya takes a moment to parse that out, and then blushes as bright as Sansa's own hair. Embarrassed into quiet, Sansa turns from her sister and back to her ravens. A request for more men-at-arms for the Wall, a query over the price of wine from the Arbour, and another marriage contract between two Crownland houses; once the birds are in the air, they are ready to leave.

The two boys are atop Mercy once again, Arya with her gelding – recently named Wolverine – and Sansa behind Sandor on Stranger. Sandor wants to reach the Trident by sundown, so they have a large chunk of land to cover in order to reach this goal. It's hard riding. Sansa hopes that the boys will be able to handle Sandor's exacting pace. If they can, then it will only be another week or more before they are reunited with Robb and Mother.

It is late in to the night when they finally make camp. Sandor had pushed them hard, harder than he had so far dared to with Sansa, and it had been an uncomfortable experience for all involved. Sansa once again resolved to never ride on her moonblood again if she could help it, but it finally seemed as if the messy process was coming to a close, thank all the gods. Arya had so far not said anything about having to ride so hard nor far without a saddle, and Sansa is grateful that her sister is at least in breeches – she cannot imagine how much more uncomfortable the experience would be if Arya was dressed in skirts, as she is!

Their camp that night is a clearing that Sorrow had told her of earlier in the day, three hundred metres off of both the road and the river, and tucked amongst a dense thicket of trees that make it difficult to see anything, let alone their ragtag group of travellers.

Sandor helps Sansa off Stranger once more and sets about removing the black stallion's tack, and Sansa heads over to the boys to help them off, as well. Arya moves as though to strip Mercy for her, but Sansa has her tend to her friends instead. Neither looks as though they've particularly enjoyed today's experience, either.

The beasts are watered, rubbed down and then tied to low-hanging branches to graze, and the humans have a quick drink and a nibble on the last of the cheese, before finding places to sleep. Hot Pie and Gendry both collapse under one of the trees on the other side of the glade to Sandor and the horses, and Sandor merely heaves his bedroll to Arya, wraps himself in his cloak, and for all intents and purposes appears to pass out beneath the tree he'd tied Stranger to.

Sansa places Sorrow atop of Mercy, and lays her own bedroll down by the two creatures. Arya watches her, grey eyes gleaming in the dark like a wolf.

"Would you bunk by me?" Sansa askes her in a whisper, desperate to have her sister close, and terrified of frightening her away. "Just for tonight!"

Warily, Arya slips over to her and spreads Sandor's roll beside Sansa's own. "How did you escape?" She asks. Going by her bloody bottom lip, Sansa supposes that this question has been plaguing her little sister since their first raven scroll.

"Sandor saved me," Sansa said softly. Arya starts, and gives her a betrayed look. "He did. He was the only one to show me any decency or kindness in that vipers nest."

"That wasn't kindness, Bird," Sandor growls lowly, shocking Arya and amusing Sansa. She's learnt her lesson since that first night – if Sandor isn't snoring, she knows that he is faking at being asleep.

"Then I must have imagined the kerchief on the wall, the cloak in court, and the sword from Flea Bottom," Sansa muses. She's watching, so she sees the colour that blooms in his cheeks, the way that he averts his eyes, and how he ruffles himself inside of his cloak.

"Go to bed, Little Bird," he growls instead. There is no heat to the tone, and so Sansa knows that he doesn't say it cruelly, merely only to cover his embarrassment. "You too, wolf-girl. We'll be riding hard again tomorrow."

With his piece said, he rolls over once again.

Sansa shakes her head, amused, and then pats the bedroll next to her invitingly. "Come on," She says encouragingly. "He's right."

That brings a snarl to Arya's lips. "He still killed my friend!"

"His prince and liege had ordered it of him," Sansa scolds. "And besides that, a smallfolk boy was hitting a highborn girl with a stick. Of course that was the end result! We were in the South, Arya, not the North, things were – are – different! Haven't you figured that out yet?!"

She's shocked her sister again – oops.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "It's been a long day. I didn't mean to snap. Let's just go to sleep."

Arya shifts awkwardly. "I can't."

"Then, let me tell you a story to put you to sleep, like the old days. How about my first warg dream?" She whispers, reaching out a hand to hold her little sister's. "I was a dog. His name was Oi Dog – he was old, and had a family of humans to protect. One of them was a little girl who looked a bit like you, called Aya. I was so sad, thinking that I'd never see you again, that I left the dream early."

"Was this in Kings Landing?" Arya whispered back.

"No, this was our first night on the road – I'd been thinking about Jon, and how terrible I had been to him at Winterfell. I dreamt he was beyond the Wall, in a Wildling camp. Jon and their King were talking about, about the walking dead. I couldn't understand half of what was being said, it didn't make sense to me."

"He's alive?" Breathed her little sister, hopeful.

"Aye, and North."

"Can you do it again? Can you dream him, like you found me?"

"… I can only try. Don't wake me until the morning, though, it's harder to stay in the dreams if I'm distracted."

"But you did fine with Sorrow."

"I know Sorrow. He's easy for me to find, and he can call me to him. But, Arya – I think that you can do this too. And I bet if you call to Nymeria, you can find her in your dreams, as well."

Arya's eyes popped wide open in shock. "Do you really think so?" She breathed.

"Call for Nymeria, and I'll see if I can find Jon again."

"How?"

"Think about her very hard – what she looked like, how she smelt, how she moved, how she sounded. Think of all of it, as hard as you can for as long as you can."

Arya nodded

Sansa drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and thought very hard on her bastard brother and North of the Wall. She could feel the moment she warged in to a blackbird – the last thing her human ears heard, however, was Arya whispering a list to herself.

"Joffrey. Cersei. Ilyn Payne. Ser Meryn. Polliver. The Mountain ... The Hound. Valar Morghulis."

It is her months of captivity in Kings Landing that help Sansa reign in her emotions enough to hold on to the dream. She cannot afford to dwell on her sister right now – she needs to find their brother. Luckily enough, he is seated right beneath the raven with a red-headed woman.

Aar, aar! She calls down to him, fluttering to the ground.

The woman snorts. "This one thinks yer pretty too, Jon Snow!"

Sansa cocks her head at that – aye, she can admit that Jon is good-looking in the same way that she could say that Father or Robb were handsome, but she would never call her brother – any of them – pretty! So she ruffles her feathers, and looks about her with interest. It seems as though Jon is still with the Wildlings, and, worryingly, he does not appear to be a prisoner. Despite the lies Sansa had parroted in Kings Landing, she knows that her father was no traitor, and that none of his children would betray any oaths they'd sworn, so … Something to think about later, she thinks firmly.

Shaking her head to clear her grim thoughts, Sansa looked about at the fresh, powdery snow beneath the raven's feet, and had an idea. She cannot talk to Jon as she had with Arya – Jon was hardly an easy word for a raven's vocals, and she didn't want to know what sort of reaction she'd get if she randomly started saying her or Arya's names, either. But she could recreate what she had done with Arya when Sorrow first helped the sisters meet again, and thus set about using this new bird's beak to write in the snow.

It wasn't as easy as the soil of the forest, and the bird itself wasn't near half as cooperative as either Sorrow or Mirth, but she still managed to scribe out a passable, if shakey, BROTHER.

Jon had gone very still when she looked at him expectantly, and the woman was watching with wide blue eyes, too.

"Wha's it say?" The girl asked curiously. When Jon told her, she said in a very quiet voice, "How can you not know what a warg is, if your brother is one?"

"None of my siblings are wargs though…" Jon whispered. Sansa gave a raven's arr, arr, arr! laugh, and then drew a big S.

"Sansa?!" Jon looked as though the next big breeze might blow him over, he was so shocked.

She hissed at him, ruffled her feathers, and then wrote WOLFSBLOOD.

"Sansa's an odd name for a boy," the girl says judgingly. "But I suppose that's Southerners. I'm Ygritte." Sansa dips the bird in the closest approximation of a curtsy she can manage.

"My oldest little sister," Jon corrects somewhat faintly.

hissssSaaaanssaaaa Sss-aaar, she tries.

"Sansa Stark?" Ygritte questions. Sansa nods. "Nice to meet you! Have you always bin a warg?" A headshake. "Well, I had to check. Your brother knows nothin', so he could have missed it before he went off to be a Crow."

Sansa looks at the body she is currently wearing, Ygritte, her brother, and then back to the Wildling woman.

"Watcher on the Wall. We call 'em Crows up here, in the real North."

The way she emphasized real North seems like a recurring argument between her and Jon, and it's not as though this crow can help carry across Sansa's words anyway, so she lets it slide, and instead pecks at Ygritte's bow. Sansa's pretty sure it's made out of Weirwood, and even though it is twice the size of her own bow, as far as she is concerned, it is beautiful.

"An archer, are you!" Ygritte exclaims cheerfully (Jon chokes). "Are you any good."

Sansa shakes her head, and sketches out BEGINNER.

"She says she's a beginner," Jon translates. "But I – forgive me, Sansa, but it's a bit hard to imagine you with a bow. Or as a warg."

Sansa puffs herself up at that and hisses ferociously. NO ONE BELIEVES, she carves in to the snow, making fuss the whole time. R & A SAME.

"You've written to Robb and Arya?" Jon asks quickly, looking for an end to the brewing argument. She draws an R and a wonky scroll, and then an A with two stick figures. "You've written Robb, and you're with Arya? Are you still in Kings Landing?" She nods to the first statement, and shakes her head to the second. She half-flies a little.

"You flew away – you escaped?" Ygritte asks. At Sansa's nod, the redhead turns to Jon and says, "I like the sound of this sister, alright! We have to go back to camp now though – are you ok to break your warg on your own, Sansa Stark? Beginners usually have trouble."

Sansa shakes her head quickly, and does another avian curtsy. She turns to Jon, draws a heart, and taps it twice. Her half-brother looks as though he's about to cry. "I love you too, Sansa – and Arya and Robb and Bran and Rickon too! Tell them for me, please?"

She cannot bear to tell Jon that their baby brothers are dead – not like this. So she gives him a sharp nod, taps the heart again, and leaves the raven and Beyond the Wall.

Hopefully Arya's warging is going better than hers.

Arya only feels a little bit like a monster for keeping her sister's shield on her Prayer, but he did still kill her friend, so she decides that he can stay there until he proves that he deserves to live. With her prayer said, however, she can now attempt to try this warging thing. Sansa had said to concentrate on Nymeria, and Arya felt that it couldn't be all that hard – she dreamt of a wolfpack every night. With very little effort at all, Arya feels herself slipping away, the scents of the forest filling her nose, churning earth beneath the pads of her paws, the dull half-lights of the moon shining bright as day to her now-advanced eyes.

Nymeria? She thinks, somewhat desperately.

The impression that comes back to her is bright – the love her wolf had felt for the daughter of Winterfell permeated everything, and Arya saw herself with long hair and the long dress in the Northern style that she had once tolerated, a shock of scent attached to the pulse that Arya realised was what she had once smelt like to Nymeria. Where, says her wolf. Safe?

Almost, Arya thinks. With pack, and sends an image of Sansa, all red hair and pretty smells.

Nymeria's head is quiet whilst she inspects the image of this new, armed Sansa she has been sent, and approvingly sends back, Grew fangs. Little Sister would be proud.

For a moment both girl and wolf are silent, sadness rebounding from one side of the link to the other as they remember Lady.

Where are you? Arya finally asks.

Nymeria's response is a confusing tangle of scents, sounds and distances, with a few scattered landmarks that only vaguely made sense to Arya. The girl tried to return the impression, but a human's nose was nowhere near as good as a wolfs, no matter how much wolfsblood that human possessed.

Don't worry, Nymeria sent softly. I will find you. I'll bring my pack, and we will find the Older Brother together, and fight off the enemy pack! This brought forth the impressions of Grey Wind and Robb, and then of the Lannisters.

The girl sent her wolf the impression of a bare-toothed smile – a hungry, angry wolf smile.

How soon?

Wolves can't count. Not really, not in the sense that humans do. But they can count time in regards to the phase of the moon. The current phase was a half moon, and Nymeria expected it to be sometime between the new moon and the first crescent, so long as her pack experienced no set-backs, and so long as Arya's human pack continued moving steadily North. Otherwise, it was likely to not be until the next half-moon before they were able to meet up again.

Another brightness welled up in Arya's chest – hope.

Her wolf was coming for her. She was moving towards her brother and mother. Her sister was, for now, safe, and had seemingly given up on being a traditional lady. Things were looking up in the world!

Arya, Robb, and now Jon. Not a one of them believed me.

When Sansa awoke from her warg dream, it was the hour of the nightingale and she was furious.

True, of all of Ned Stark's children, Sansa was the most Southern. True, she had rejected those activities which Septa Mordane had labelled as unladylike, or unbecoming for future suitors. True, she had never desired to hold a weapon, let alone wield one. True, she of all her siblings was least associated with the North.

That did not make her weak. That did not make her incapable. That did not mean she could not learn. Joffrey and the court may have called her stupid, but none of them had had cause to learn the bow in just over a week – in fact, Joffrey was notorious terrible with arms! He had never figured out ancient magicks, he wouldn't know how to handle spycraft if it, if it bit him in the rear!

As quietly as she could, Sansa rose and grabbed her bow, figuring she may as well see if she couldn't replenish their meat supplies. Sorrow had spotted many fat Riverland rabbits yesterday, and maybe she could finally claim that "first kill" that Sandor had been waxing about. She hadn't gone far when her little sister rolled over in her sleep, growling like a wolf. Her eyes were just barely slitted open, and were warg white. As much as Sansa was the Proper Southern Maid, her sister was, if not Proper, then certainly a desirable Northern one. She had picked up the dream warging even easier than Sansa had.

Sansa's rage grew. Arya hadn't learnt the bow in a week – she had taken months. Arya hadn't survived Joffrey's tortures, Kings Landing's scorn. Arya had been running wild like the little wolfchild she was, and Sansa had lied lied lied her way into the shadows and out of obvious sight.

Sandor was snoring, so it was safe to tiptoe past him. Here, now, she is so much more than Kings Landing made her out to be. She steps into the shadows of the forest and out of the terrible darkness of the court, and she was safe and more free then she had been since they first left Winterfell.

She gave Mercy a pet on her way past, but otherwise paid the others no mind, excepting Sandor's sharp ears. She was in no mood to handle his prickliness, on top of her own.

Sorrow drew his head from beneath his wing, and hopped his way up Mercy's back, and then on to Sansa's shoulder. She gave him a grudging smile, and together they slunk into the forest.

She was still mad, ire licking through her blood like a fire, but having to concentrate on moving quietly through the dim lit forest helped to focus the rage. Sorrow would occasionally drag her into his own head to offer insights to her, such as how to move more steadily or quietly, and where to draw her eyes to look for signs of prey. They travelled closer to the river-side of the woods, slowing and stepping even more quietly in an attempt to narrow in on the just-stirring rabbits. On her own, perhaps she wouldn't have accounted for the wind and the superior noses of the forest animals, so she was thankful to Sorrow. It took a few tries to make her bow movements quiet enough to go undetected by the bunnies, but by the time she had seen fifteen rabbits, Sansa had been successful enough to catch three. She tried not to let the numbers discourage her, and decided to take the carcases back to the camp so that they might treat it for breakfast (she desperately hoped that three rabbits would be enough between the six of them, and yet knew her folly for what it was. Arya alone could have eaten a whole rabbit, she was sure, let alone a giant of a man and two growing boys).

Making her quiet careful way back to the camp, Sansa was glad to find her wrath had simmered to smouldering embers. So long as she was concentrating on something else, her head yet remained clear. To this effect she was constructing lists in her head: what she would need for breakfast, how many provisions they had left, how far it was to Riverrun, how long it would take, how best to deal with Petyr Baelish. This kept her in relatively good humours, such that she was able to ghost in and out of the camp to deposit the rabbits, gather firewood, and fill a pail with water from the Trident. Sandor had taught her how to build the fire, and where he kept the flint. Shae's dagger she used for the steel, and she is surprised that Sandor is still snoring. Oh well.

Arya and her boys still sleep, too, but Sansa's still mad at her sister, so she is glad of that. Her next issue is the actual skinning of the beasts – she has never done this herself. For a moment, she is tempted to warg that raven Beyond the Wall and ask Jon to help her (even if she's mad with him, she also knows that he can never say no to any of their siblings if they only ask it of him – and besides, Ygritte is a Wildling and she likes Sansa, so, that's something). She knows the folly of such an idea; it's not as though she can have such an extensive conversation when Ygritte can't read, and that bird hadn't been fond of writing.

Shae's dagger is much smaller than Sandor's skinning knife, but that is fine, since Sansa is so much smaller than Sandor herself.

"Little Bird?" Sandor calls softly, sounding confused. "What is this?"

Sansa looks up at him, surprised.

"What are you doing?" Arya pipes, also awake and also confused, and at the combined doubt, Sansa's anger returns in full.

"Breakfast," She spat, wrenching her arrow from the first fat creature with unnecessary force. "Or is that unbelievable of me now too?"

Gendry and Hot Pie both shrink back against their tree, Arya stares, and Sandor moved forward slowly, as if dealing with a cornered animal.

"No, Bird, you've come a long way in a sennight. Let me show you how to skin it."

"What?!" Three young voices practically screeched the question, almost cutting off Sandor's second sentence.

"You learnt all tha' in seven days?!" Hot Pie exclaimed first, whilst Arya choked and Gendry tried to pick his jaw back up off the ground.

"Bow…?" Arya croaked, pointing to the arrow-stuck bunnies.

"The, the magicks?" Gendry added.

Unfortunately, this destroyed any headway Sandor might have made towards calming her, as, with a sound rather like a boiling teakettle and (no doubt) a face just as red, Sansa turned around and stormed off into the forest.

"Sorrow!" Her voice echoed off of the trees, harsh as the raven's answering caw. "Waste!"

Aar, aar, aar!

Sorrow wheeled over the three youths, cackling delightedly. A set each of grey, blue and hazel eyes looked up, and regretted it. Much as with Anguy the day before, Sorrow released his bowels thrice upon the upturned faces before taking after his mistress.

Arya was furious.

Precious Sansa had surprised her by catching fat rabbits for breakfast, starting a fire and setting a pail of water to boil when they had awoken that morning. And all any of them had done was be surprised – for Arya had told Gendry and Hot Pie stories of her Proper Southern Lady sister – and she had had Sorrow shit on their faces!

Stupid Sansa. The Hound had gone after her in the woods, calling her Little Bird and apologising and acting almost like a real knight from the stories! He spent ages trying to track her down, so it had fallen to Arya and the boys to start breakfast. Hot Pie had wanted to make a stew, but it would have taken too long, and they didn't have a way to save the left overs, so they'd attempted to cook strips of rabbit meat instead. Sansa hadn't thought to pick any of the nuts or berries that were surely growing in these woods. Sansa hadn't even looked twice at the wild herbs that grew around their little campsite. Sansa hadn't had to escape on her own, or pretend to be a boy, or forget how to be a Stark.

By the time Sansa had been calmed down enough to return, she had refused to look at anyone who wasn't her precious shield or an animal. They had eaten in silence, destroyed any evidence of their camp, mounted, and followed the Trident until it became the Red Fork

As they ride (the boys atop Sansa's Mercy, Arya on her Wolverine, and Sansa behind the stupid Hound), Sansa practices stringing, drawing and unstringing her bow, again and again and again. She does not fire a single arrow until they finally stop for lunch, at which point she looses a half-hundred, builds a small fire and accepts ravenscrolls from the three new birds who had been following them. She eats almost nothing (Sorrow had brought her small bunches of berries intermittently), and refuses to talk to anyone.

It eats at Arya. She had been so hopeful this morning, after her wolf-dream, and even if her friend's murderer was here, he had kept her sister safe, and hadn't been terrible to Arya, like his brother had been. He hadn't said much of anything to any of them, actually, since breakfast.

She wants to demand of her sister, to know if she found Jon, if he is safe, and why was Sansa so mad anyway? Arya had burst in to tears when they first reunited, and Sansa was a fucking bird, so how is Arya supposed to know if Sansa had cried too?! Arya knew she hadn't been happy to have her back after all! She was too dirty and ragged and wild for precious Sansa, why the fuck did she even bother, and – !

"Girl," The Hound growls at her. She snarls back at him, but he continues. "I can hear you thinking from here. Just spit it out, and stop staring at us like that."

"Why're you so mad at me?!" Arya demands of her sister. "Did you not want to find me after all?"

"What?! No!" Sansa turns around quickly, nearly slipping off of Stranger in the process. "Arya, from the moment I thought you were ahead of us, I've wanted nothing so much as to find you – I intercepted a raven telling Lord Tywin that all of the smallfolk at Harrenhal had been executed, and it was all Sandor could do to get me to move until Sorrow brought me your first letter. I was mad because neither you nor Robb nor Jon thought that I was capable." Sansa swallowed, and fished a letter from her sleeve, which Sorrow flew to Arya to read for herself. "I found Jon last night, and he was so shocked that I was a warg and an archer than he almost fell over. Not a one of you had faith in me."

Arya read Robb's message quickly, and looked back up at Sansa, chewing on her already raw bottom lip. "It's not that," She began hesitatingly.

"But it is!" Sansa exclaimed. "You all thought that I would stay locked away and undependable in Kings Landing, a prisoner and a puppet. Didn't you?"

Arya stays quiet.

"It wasn't just that I was mad at the world for saying that that is the ideal noble woman," Sansa whispers. "I was hurt that all of you thought so little of me."

"You're cleverer than the boys, usually," Arya offered. "But, you kept saying how in love you were with Joffrey!"

"Because I thought I was supposed to be, Arya!" Sansa exclaims. "I thought that the greatest thing I could do was marry the prince, who was supposed to be chivalrous and honourable and handsome and good, and give him lots of babies – that's what we're supposed to want! Why do you think I've been trying so hard to grow since we escaped? If I can prove my worth to Robb is greater as a whisperwoman than as a bargaining chip, then I don't have to pretend that that's what I want, or that I love whatever man he tells me to marry for politics, or roll over and let some stranger take me. Don't you get it?!"

There are tears gathering in the corners of her big sister's eyes, and Arya finds matching ones growing in her own eyes, too.

"Why didn't you just say so?" Arya mumbles, scrubbing at her face. "I thought you hated me."

With a choked noise, Sansa slips from Stranger and then swings herself up onto Wolverine. She clutches Arya to her tightly, tears slipping into Arya's ratnest hairdo and dripping from Arya's nose.

"You make me so mad sometimes! But you are my little sister. I can't hate you, Arya Stark." With a sniffle, Sansa pulls back and turns Arya's face to her own. "The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. We are going to get back to Robb and Mother, and we are going to win this war and find Jon and retake Winterfell! Ok?"

A wobbly smile finds its way on to Arya's face. "OK!"

They had been travelling for another few hours when Mirth tugs at the edges of her mind, drawing Sansa away from another petty argument between her sister and her shield. The scene Mirth shows her is a funeral, on what looked to be one of the Forks. Mirth shows her Robb and Mother, shows her a man who looks like her Tully-faced brothers armed with a bow, and an older man in scaled armour with greying red hair. There is a boat floating down the river, packed with grasses and containers, decked with the Tully flag and a stone-eyed body of an even older man, thin with sickness and in death. There's an open brazier burning by the man who must be her uncle, and together she and Mirth watch as he lights an arrow and looses it – it misses.

Didn't want to get hit, Mirth thinks to her brightly. Never know where this one is aiming.

You know him?

Mirth offers her memories, countless scenes of the man before her – her Uncle Edmure? – trying and failing to hit thousands of targets. Edmure takes three shots at her grandfather's funeral boat, and thrice misses. Robb's head is ducked to hide his amusement. The older warrior finally tires of watching Edmure, and so steps up, takes the bow and a single arrow, fires, and then stalks away. Behind him, the arrow sets the pyre alight, and the boat passes around a bend in the river. Sansa is suitably impressed.

The gathered household tags alone on the older gentlemen's coattails, and Mother, Robb and a dark-skinned woman who must be his new wife, and Uncle Edmure all remain at the peer.

"At least he is at peace now," Mother murmurs, bowing her head in prayer. Robb puts his hand on her shoulder, his blue eyes skipping around the scene.

Now! Mirth cackles. Fun fun fun!

The female lands in front of the King of the North, flicking her tail cheekily and giving a raven laugh.

Arr arrr arrr!

She pulls the scroll from her foot, and holds it out to Robb expectantly.

"Is it your sister again?" The woman asks curiously.

"Aye, I think – Mother, read this for me? I think it might actually be Sansa!"

"'Don't be a shift'?" Her good-sister askes.

"Whenever Arya was mad at Sansa, she'd cut a hole in Sansa's mattress and stuff sheep dung inside," Robb recalled fondly. "They called it sheep shift, because Father didn't tolerate swearing in front of his girls. But, what I want to know is who Sorrow and Mirth are?"

Aar aar arr, Mirth called, before flicking down in to a raven's curtsy.

Her goodsister crouched down by mirth, and looked in to dew-bright eyes. "Who are you?"

"It's a bird, Talisa, it's not going to –" Uncle Edmure begins.

hissssSaaaanssaaaa Sss-aaar!

"What?" Mother and Robb whisper, both white-faced.

Mirth gives a throaty laugh and takes to the air. She circles the peer once, swoops over Robb, and shits on his face.

Riverrun echoes with raven laughter and man's curses, and Sansa feels her spirits lift even more.

I love the dynamic between the Stark girls, and I really hate how often people will set them against each other or bash each other. My little sister and I are both incredibly different creatures, and are six years apart. We fight all the time – a lot more, and more viciously, as children – but that doesn't mean we don't love each other or would literally do anything for each other, even when we're furious with the other. I've tried to show that here, and I hope I've done them justice, though as ever, I really appreciate any criticisms and constructive feedback. Also, I recently started watching Inuyasha, so you might notice some of that influence in this chapter too… oops ^_^"what