Part I: Wolf Pup


Ned sat beside her for a while. "Lady," he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.

Shortly, Jory brought him Ice.

When it was over, he said, "Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at Winterfell."

"All that way?" Jory said, astonished.

"All that way," Ned affirmed. "The Lannister woman shall never have this skin."


The four men had been gone for less than an hour when one of them returned, panting.

"My lord," Quent gasped, a look of astonishment on his face. Had he run the entire way back? Ned frowned. Arya had disappeared, again, and Sansa would not stop weeping.

"I left the road for a moment, to relieve myself, and found a weirwood tree," Quent said, his eyes wide. Ned blinked. A weirwood tree? Here?

"My lord, we fear for you, going south. You will need every man. Could we not bury the direwolf beneath the weirwood?" Quent ventured, his voice tentative.

Ned sighed and thought for a long moment. A weirwood tree was fitting. They could always exhume the direwolf and bring her bones North once the business in King's Landing was finished. At last, Ned gave a stiff nod. Quent smiled weakly in relief, ducking his head respectfully as he turned back the way he came.

When Ned reached Darry he found Sansa still sobbing on her bed, her auburn hair mussed. That surprised Ned almost more than the sobbing, for Catelyn took pride in how careful Sansa was of her appearance, a true lady. Ned patted Sansa's back awkwardly.

"Sansa. Child, listen to me," Ned ordered gently.

Sansa tried to stifle her tears, looking up at him with her mother's deep blue eyes. They were red-rimmed from her crying, and her nose was red and swollen.

"She was good, she didn't do anything," Sansa sobbed, leaning her head against his chest like she had when she was little.

Ned put his arms around his daughter and held her, his heart throbbing with guilt. Was this who his friend Robert had become? A man who ordered the slaughter of a gentle pet rather than deal with his angry wife and lying son?

"I know," Ned said heavily. "That did not matter to the queen."

Sansa hiccupped.

"It was Arya's fault," she said angrily. "She ruined everything, the prince was being so gallant before."

"Sansa," Ned reproached her. "Did Arya make Joffrey attack her friend? Did Arya make the queen blame Lady, who bore no fault?"

Sansa sniffled for a long while before she responded, sulkily.

"No," she admitted. "Joffrey was being mean, and I told the queen that Lady didn't do anything, and she didn't listen!"

"People can seem kind and then become cruel," Ned said with a sigh, stroking Sansa's hair.

"I didn't even get to say goodbye," Sansa sniffled into his shirt.

"I was going to send her bones to Winterfell," Ned said slowly. "But the men found a weirwood tree near the road, about an hour north of here. They will bury her beneath it, and the old gods will watch over her."

Ned sat with Sansa until she wept herself to sleep, her little heart breaking as his heart pulsed with guilt.